


Damnatio Memoriae

by PNGuin



Series: Dux Bellorum [3]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alec Lightwood is Not Okay, Alec Lightwood-centric, Drug Addiction, Everyone is having a rough time, Good Boyfriend Alec Lightwood, Guilt, Head of the Institute Alec Lightwood, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, M/M, Magnus Bane is Not Okay, Mental Health Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Episode: s02e12 You Are Not Your Own, Self-Harm, and a good brother, but they will be, featuring the Clave on their usual bullshit, shadow world politics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2020-10-27 18:55:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20765294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PNGuin/pseuds/PNGuin
Summary: He’s finally achieved at least this one dream that his parents had for him, has finally reached a point where he can do something about the world he lives in. And yet, for all of the power that he now holds, never has he felt so utterly powerless.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Long time no see, everyone! The feedback from Ius Primae Noctis, Noli Me Tangere ,and the related one-shots has not stopped surprising me, especially after the show itself has met its end. I know it's been nearly a year since I posted my last big fic and I'm sorry for such a delay.
> 
> Damnatio Memoriae starts off right around episode 12 of season 2 and deals predominantly with the heavy topics that Shadowhunters did not follow through on, such as the trauma that Magnus faced with the body swap and the resurfacing of his memories, the childhood abuse that Jace has to come to terms with, and the effects of Izzy's recovery from addiction. All of this is placed within context of Alec's point of view and in relation to his own personal struggles.
> 
> Warnings are listed in the tags and additional warning will be added as they become relevant. If you notice I miss anything, please inform me and I will add it.
> 
> My modified timeline places these events around June 2017, about 10 months after Clary's birthday and the beginning of the series.
> 
> Title is Latin for "condemnation of memory."

He’s awoken by the shifting of the bed. It’s a slow, gentle movement, obviously one that is not intended to wake him. But Alec is so highly attuned to every little thing when he’s sleeping that it’s impossible to _not_ notice. Especially when the one getting out of bed is his boyfriend.

He waits, a lesson in futility, for Magnus to reach over that gaping expanse between them and shake him awake. Waits for the warlock to lay back down in bed, curling up against Alec’s back, stealing back the blankets that Alec has accidentally collected in the middle of the night. He lays there, silent and unmoving aside from the forcibly steady up and down of his chest, and he waits. For something. For anything. For everything.

Some nights, he’ll get that response. Magnus will pull himself out of his own head just long enough to reach out, will bury his face against Alec’s shoulder, will let the shadowhunter hum quiet songs under his breath. The Beatles are a favorite, but occasionally he’ll pick old Spanish lullabies that his mother used to sing for him, back when such comfort was acceptable. Some nights, Magnus will sit on the edge of the bed, not leaving but not coming any closer. Maybe he will lay a hand on Alec’s shoulder, maybe he’ll let Alec thread their fingers together. Maybe he will not.

But tonight he gets nothing. Nothing except for the quiet shuffle of Magnus’ slipper-clad feet as he tiptoes away from the bed, the airy rustle of his robe as he slides it on, the nearly silent catch of the lock as the warlock opens the door and flees from the bedroom, from his nightmares, from _Alec_.

Another night alone, then. Another night of pressing his face into pillows that smell of sandalwood, staining the fabric with tears that trip their way down his cheeks. Another night of lying awake and hating himself for the mistakes that he’s made. Another night of Magnus running away and Alec being too afraid to chase after him.

It isn’t his place. It _isn’t_. Magnus needs space, needs time, needs to do these things at his own pace. He needs the chance to dictate the terms of his healing, and Alec of all people knows this. And he _understands_, even as it hurts. Understands that maybe Magnus can’t bear to look at him, to meet the eyes of the person who stood by and did absolutely _nothing_ while he was tortured within the walls of the New York Institute. Perhaps it’s why Magnus can’t sleep; not because of nightmares, but because a perpetrator of his horrors is invading the sanctity of his own home, is snoring right beside him even as he’s trying to forget the pains that plague him.

They’ve talked about it, sparingly, as little as feasibly possible, only the bare minimum that Alec has coerced out of Magnus kicking and screaming. And Alec thought that – maybe, perhaps, _hopefully_ – their talk had made things better. Even if only an infinitely tiny amount. But he thought at least enough that Magnus would stop running away from him, that Magnus would reach out for him, that Alec would no longer be left in a cold bed and wake up only to the stale hint of Magnus’ presence.

But Alec doesn’t move. Not now. He _can’t_. He’s paralyzed by some crippling fear of the inevitable. If he drags himself out of bed and leaves the bedroom, he will find Magnus sitting in one of the armchairs, staring at that _kris_ dagger as if he can still see the bloodstains that mar it. If he doesn’t leave the bed, if he remains hiding under the sheets like a child, then maybe that eventuality will never exist. Schrodinger’s traumatized boyfriend. Magnus is both hurting, and not. Alec is both sleeping, and not.

Just like the past few weeks, Alec will slip back into an exhausted, fitful slumber. He’s too fatigued to _not_ give in, eventually. And he’ll wake up early in the morning to cold, empty sheets. He’ll take a quick shower and make a cup of coffee and watch Magnus with dark eyes even as the warlock resolutely ignores his looks. He’ll go to work, and scramble to repair all of the shattered strands of command left in the wake of his parents and Aldertree and Inquisitor Herondale. He’ll snap out orders to shadowhunters who see only his abhorrent sexuality when they look at him, and he’ll pester downworld leaders until they finally agree to his Cabinet, and he’ll bite back the tears of frustration that loom deep in his heart at every single futility he rails against. He’ll probably get in an argument with Jace, and maybe even Izzy, and then after a nearly fifteen hour work day, he’ll shuffle back to Magnus’ apartment and carefully edge around the minefield of their relationship.

And he’ll do it all again. Again, and again, and again. As long as he possibly can, and longer still. Until Magnus breaks and snaps at him to just quit coming back, until the Institute falls into chaos and he’s deposed, until the Cabinet fails and he’s left with only the rubble of the sins of his parents and the failings of his own over-ambitious goals.

Tomorrow. He’ll do all of that tomorrow.

For now, he dries his tears on a pillow that smells of stale sandalwood.

* * *

His office is already in disarray when he stumbles in, bleary-eyed and exhausted at barely six in the morning. He’s been Head of the Institute for a fleeting two weeks and he’s been drowning in misfiled reports, misbehaving shadowhunters, and mistrustful downworlders. The Inquisitor has been blocking his every effort, the Consul has been watching him like a hawk, and nearly half of his own employees have threatened to transfer out of New York. Much as he wouldn’t miss them, he needs a _minimum_ of five hundred active duty shadowhunters to keep the Institute up and running, and that’s during a normal week. Let alone when he has tense relations with the downworld to repair and a steady increase in demon attacks and the threat of Valentine _still_ looming over the city.

Shadowhunters are willfully disobeying his orders, five young recruits have been injured on botched missions, the chain of command is in absolute shambles following the rapid-fire change of leadership, several of the slighted downworld parties are calling for Jace and Clary to be put on trial for the incident with the Soul Sword, and all of it has landed in Alec’s lap like some giant mess that is his and his alone to clean up.

And those are just the impersonal issues following him throughout the day. The personal problems are almost even worse.

He has a sandwich resting on the plate in his hands. The poor thing is a monstrous compilation, something that he’s certain would lead any lesser man or woman to their deaths. He spent his entire childhood and many teenaged years making up the odd concoction. A Lightwood special. Peanut butter and jelly surprise. The surprise is the dill pickle and pepperoni added. It smells horrific, and he doesn’t have the faintest clue how Izzy can even stomach it, but he’s reluctantly assembled it enough times to have grown immune to the pungent stench. He doesn’t even remember when the foul dish became a staple of his ‘help Izzy feel better’ routine, but somewhere between skinned knees and period troubles, it had wormed its way into their life.

Alec stands in front of her door, diagonally across from his own bedroom, where they have been since they were young children. He remembers how he used to leave his door open just a crack, and how he would spend his nights listening for her to dart out of her room and into his. She used to slip under his covers and reach for his hand, and he would grab his witchlight and regale her with all of the mundane stories he read.

They don’t do that anymore.

Instead, he knocks, letting his fist fall heavily against the dark wood. When he gets no response, he calls his sister’s name. “I have peanut butter and jelly surprise,” he coaxes to the silent door. “It’s your favorite, Iz.”

He used to trim the crust off, because Izzy hated the taste and their mother would never do it for her. Alec looks down at the loathsome sandwich on his plate, free of crust and leaking strawberry jelly and pickle juice. It seems to taunt him as he lets his free hand drop back to his side.

It’s the fourth day in a row that Izzy has not opened the door. He knows that she’s still in there, can hear the faint rustling of her movement even beyond the threshold. But he worries, the longer she leaves him shut out. A part him wants to draw the unlock rune on the doorknob and force his way in. He knows that his sister would never forgive him for the intrusion.

He sets the plate down in front of that damned closed door and wonders when Izzy stopped running to his room after her nightmares. When she was really little, before she had even begun her training, she would force him to steal a seraph blade from storage and check every nook and cranny in their rooms. Under the bed, and in the closet, and by the windows. Alec used to be the one to beat back the monsters for Izzy.

There isn’t a way to scare this monster.

He tries one more time, another heartbreaking example of his utter uselessness, before he turns away and heads down the hallway. Maybe tomorrow Izzy will open the door, maybe tomorrow Alec will hug her and let her know that he loves her, maybe tomorrow the monsters will be easier to scare.

* * *

His limbs are weighed down with lead even as he shuffles through the halls of the Institute. It’s well past noon, maybe even nearing dinner time, and he’s been slaving away in his office since six in the morning. His head pounds behind his eyeballs and his back aches and every fiber of his being is shaky with all of the energy he hasn’t been able to expend. He needs to go on a patrol, needs to _punch_ something or shoot arrows until his hands ache, until it distracts him from the pain that nestles deep in his chest.

It’s a bad thought. He cuts it off, scrapes it out of his mind, cauterizes it. He lets his body work on autopilot while he triages the damage in his own head. Just moving around the Institute, getting out of the office he’s been cooped up in for nearly ten hours helps to settle that fidgeting, worming compulsion that tingles in his hands. It’s enough.

All of his thoughts are jumbled, his emotions a tangled up mess. He can’t seem to grasp the beginning or end point of any one particular feeling. His feet take him to the training room and he hates himself for it, but the draw pulling him there isn’t from the _need_ in his hands. It’s from the _parabatai_ rune on his hip. Tugging him, always nearer, always closer, always necessary. He follows it, as he always has, and he tries to unravel the maelstrom in his heart.

He knows Jace is in the training room even before he crosses the threshold. He can feel it, deep in the rattling of his own bones, can sense the phantom echo each time Jace’s fists connect with the vinyl of the punching bag. Alec knows it intimately; from his own hands, from Jace’s hands. As he draws closer, he loses his perception, loses his grasp. His hands or Jace’s hands? Whose blood is on the vinyl, whose heart is bleeding out, whose agony is he feeling?

It seems like his own, clawing deep into his heart and anchoring itself there. But maybe it is Jace. Maybe it’s both of them, a never-ending feedback loop that keeps itself going, in perpetual motion. He can’t tell where he ends and Jace begins. Maybe there is no beginning or end. Everything _hurts_; maybe the sting in his knuckles is Jace but the curdle of his stomach is his. Maybe it’s the other way around. Or, maybe, it doesn’t even matter.

Not for the first time, not for the last time, Alec stumbles upon a loved one wailing away on the punching bag in the training room. Jace has only been living back in the Institute for a few weeks now, and already Alec suspects that he’s spent the majority of his days beating the shit out of himself. He’s felt it in the ceaseless ache that rings hollowly in his bones, that ephemeral pain that exists in the empty spaces between their bond.

Looking back on it, he’s certain that Jace must have felt a similar sensation on all those early mornings that Alec heaved himself out of bed and pounded into the punching bag until his knuckles bruised, shot arrows until his fingers bled. He wonders how Jace tolerated it, how Jace tolerated _him_. But maybe that’s because Jace has never been any better than himself. For all those years of Alec’s self-imposed isolation and hatred, maybe Jace wasn’t any different.

He stands before Jace now and tries to get his attention. The younger man continues to strike at the vinyl until each hit shatters what’s left of Alec’s heart. He can feel them, deep in his very soul, and it hurts worse than all the times their roles were reversed. Pain in the hands is far preferable to pain in the heart.

“Jace,” he calls, quiet and desperate in the silent seconds between each punishing hit. His brother doesn’t turn, doesn’t stop in his self-destructive pursuit. Alec wonders when he started behaving like this; Alec wonders if he’ll ever stop. “Jace, look at me,” he tries again, voice sharper and firmer.

His _parabatai_ pauses just long enough to rest his battered hands against the bag and turn a scowl in Alec’s direction. “Don’t you have more important things to be doing?” he asks. Jace’s tone is neutral enough, but Alec knows the clipped manner of his words, can sense the frustration that boils away in his blood.

He has over six dozen transfer requests to deny and a new patrol schedule that has to be made and a budget for the Institute next year that needs to be reviewed and several pending treaties he’s attempting to negotiate to form a downworld cabinet and a comprehensive meeting with several representatives from the Clave in only a few days. At any other point in his life, Alec would be focusing more intently on such matters. Now, his head is full of the bags under Magnus’ eyes and the continued cold shoulder from Izzy and Jace’s split knuckles.

“Let me apply an _iratze_ for you,” he pushes, already pulling out his stele and expecting Jace to offer him his hand.

Jace doesn’t. He scoffs and pushes away from the punching bag and looks down at the floor. “Don’t need one,” he insists, in the same distant tone of voice that Alec uses all of the time. When did they grow to be so similar? Were they not supposed to be opposites, drawn together? Were they not meant to be complementary, rather than mirror reflections? “I’ve got things to do,” Jace adds, already turning his back on Alec and walking away.

Alec doesn’t know what to say, so he remains silent. A stoic statue that watches helplessly as his brother leaves. He didn’t used to do that. Neither of them used to do that. They used to wrestle and spar and rough each other up a little bit, just enough to wear away the sting of their emotions. And then they would pick each other back up, brush off the dust and blood from their relationship, and settle back into that comfortable silence that’s always existed.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

He’ll talk to Jace tomorrow.

All his life, Alec has been prepared for leadership. He studied for countless hours to perfect multiple languages, to understand Clave laws and politics and history, to learn all of the tactics of war and violence. He trained until his body was that of a perfect soldier, until his muscles ached and his hands were bruised and his fingers bled. He’s finally achieved at least this one dream that his parents had for him, has finally reached a point where he can _do_ something about the world he lives in.

And yet, for all of the power that he now holds, never has he felt so utterly powerless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have both good and bad news.
> 
> The bad news: due to how overwhelming my life is at the moment, I'm not sure if this fic and all the future fics I had planned will ever be written.
> 
> The good news: I have about 40,000 words of this fic written and I have decided to go ahead and start posting what I have finished. I figured I owe it to my lovely readers to give what I have to offer.
> 
> Usually, I do not start posting longer fics until they are completely finished, as I like to go back and reedit everything when I can. So this will be unedited and unpolished, but I hope you guys can still get something out of reading it.
> 
> I would like to reiterate that I have never personally faced many of the issues discussed in this fic (such as childhood abuse, sexual abuse, drug addiction and recovery, and the various mental health issues that these present). That being said, I have put a fair amount of research into my portrayal of these topics and I hope that they come across as compassionate but honest. If anything regarding such topics is offensive or misrepresented, please let me know and I will do what I can to fix it.
> 
> Thank you all so very much for your continued support and I hope you all enjoy what I have of this installment. Please feel free to leave comments or critiques. Or if you wish to share your own experiences, as your own form of catharsis or interaction with the characters. Even if I do no respond to comments, I do read (and reread...and reread again) all of them, so know that your voice is always heard.
> 
> Love you all,  
~PNGuin


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know everyone is absolutely BEGGING me for happier times...but y'all should know by now how I operate. Things always get Worse before they get Better.

Alec wakes to the smell of smoke.

His body is alert and moving into action before his brain is even on enough to register what’s happening. He’s reaching over for his spare stele and seraph blade that he and Magnus had compromised on, always resolutely kept in the bedside table nearest Alec. Just wrapping his fingers around the warm _adamas_ of his stele has him easily sliding into the state of awareness that had been drilled into him since birth. His eyes flicker around the room, taking in and analyzing the situation without a conscious thought.

The curtains are on fire. That’s the first thing that his mind focuses on. It isn’t some huge inferno and they haven’t been burning for long. There’s a somewhat contained ball of fire slowly eating away the very center of the fabric, thin tendrils of smoke fluttering up from the flames and curling where the wall and the ceiling meet. Alec’s brain is working rapidly; he has the correct rune in the forefront of his mind and his body tenses to leap over Magnus’ side of the bed and deal with the unexpected fire. But before he can, there is a choked sob at his side.

_Magnus_, his alert but still sleep-addled mind supplies, as if he even needs to consciously recognize the sound. Alec looks down and his heart shatters at the sight of his boyfriend. The warlock is curled up, contorted into some huddle that appears painful; he’s turned away from Alec, a position that he’s favored since the Azazel Incident. From what Alec can see of his face – the half that isn’t buried against his pillow – his brows are furrowed and his face twisted into a visage of pain so visceral that Alec can feel its phantom echo in his own heart. Magnus’ hands are tangling the sheets, where wisps of smoke drift up from scorch marks on the red fabric.

He lets out a whimper and mumbles some words in a language Alec doesn’t recognize. But he doesn’t need to understand the words to hear the agony. It’s this that finally has Alec carelessly tossing his stele and seraph blade back towards the bedside table and turning his full attention to his boyfriend. The fire on the curtains is still steadily spreading, but Alec now realizes that the flames are the distinctive wavering of warlock fire; none of his runes would be able to put it out anyway. So he focuses entirely on _Magnus_.

Sweat beads on the warlock’s face and bare chest, dripping down and soaking the sheets around him, and another whimper escapes. His body twitches, curling in on himself even tighter; Alec can see where Magnus is practically shaking from how tensed all of his muscles are. Each gasped out sob, each whimper, each crackle of the warlock fire sounds loud in the hollowness of the bedroom. Alec wishes that he had awoken to an intruder or a demon of some sort; he knows how to fight those enemies.

But he knows how to handle nightmares, even if this one is more volatile than he’s accustomed to. He’s been soothing his siblings after bad dreams ever since Izzy was a toddler, and considering how prone to nightmares all three of his siblings were, it’s not surprising that he has a few tricks up his sleeve. That being said, Alec knows that it’s usually better to wait the nightmare out, let it run its course without interfering. And normally he would do just that, sit nearby and wait for Magnus to wake up or simply fall back asleep.

The curtains are still on fire. The flames are barely even spreading, but Alec can’t run the risk. Even if it isn’t the best option, he has to wake Magnus up. He takes a deep breath, calming his own adrenaline-fueled heart and stopping any knee-jerk reactions, before he inches closer to Magnus. Slowly, steadily, with a quiet hushing noise and a string of mindless little endearments that slip past his lips, he settles near his boyfriend’s side, close enough to touch but far enough that hopefully none of Magnus’ limbs will hit him if the warlock accidentally lashes out.

Alec carefully holds out one of his hands and reaches for Magnus. He can feel the heat radiating off of his boyfriend as he gets closer to touching the bare skin of his shoulder. Magnus always runs a few degrees warmer than Alec does; it’s a blessing in the winter, when Alec loves to curl his cold toes against Magnus’ calves, much to the warlock’s mock grousing. Now, he feels the warmth of his skin like a burning brand. It’s hotter than a fever, as if Magnus is burning alive.

But when he finally lays a gentle hand on Magnus’ shoulder, it is Alec who burns.

He flinches back immediately, cradling his hand to his chest and biting his lip hard enough that he can taste the iron tang of blood. It _burns_ and his eyes sting with surprised tears even as he sucks in a sharp breath. His brain stumbles over the explanation, but then all of the dots connect. The curtains are on fire, Magnus is in the throes of a night terror, and his magic is lashing out. Alec’s hand throbs from where he attempted to touch Magnus, but he’s dealt with worse injuries before.

Alec shoves his own pain down, deep down in the bowels of his heart, and focuses back on the matter at hand. He has to help Magnus first and then he can deal with the fallout, can triage the damage. But Magnus always takes priority.

“Magnus, baby, you need to wake up,” he murmurs, soft but piercing even over the sound of crackling fire and Magnus’ whimpers. “It’s just a dream, sweetheart. You’re not there. You’re here in the loft, with me, your Alexander.”

He continues on in a soothing voice, sitting inches away from the searing skin of his lover and desperately hoping for the flames in the bedroom to die down. Alec doesn’t even remember most of what he says, quiet endearments and platitudes and anecdotes, anything that his exhausted and distressed mind decides to ramble about in the scorched hours of the morning.

Eventually, some unknowable time later, his efforts pay off and the warlock fire clinging to the curtains vanishes. Magnus’ body finally relaxes and he heaves out a gusty sigh that seems to breathe all of the tension out of his muscles. The warlock sags, the heat that had been radiating from his skin dissipating into the air around them, and Alec chokes out a stifled sigh of relief.

He stays at Magnus’ side, still, even as the pain from his burned hand claws its way up his arm and throughout his body. Alec diligently waits, watching the gentle rise and fall of Magnus’ chest, listening to the quiet puff of his breath, desperately looking for any sign that the night terror may resurface. He thankfully finds nothing out of the ordinary, besides, perhaps, a few new scorch marks on the bedspread and the curtains. Simple fixes, ones that he can hopefully take care of before Magnus notices.

The pain in his hand is undeniable, now that he no longer has some other task taking precedence. Alec viciously bites back a moan that attempts to escape as he eases himself out of bed and he has enough presence of mind to grab his discarded stele on his way to Magnus’ master bathroom. He closes the door behind him and flicks on the light with his undamaged hand and he has to abruptly lean against the sink counter for support when he can see the flesh on his burned palm.

Most of his palm is dominated by a second-degree burn; he can tell by the blisters that have already begun forming. He’s had far worse from his own line of work and he’s just relieved that he doesn’t have to deal with anything third-degree. His injury is nothing that a quick _iratze_ and natural nephilim healing can’t fix.

He has his stele in his free hand, poised over his wrist to draw in an _iratze_, when he hesitates. Alec freezes up with the tip of his stele glowing bright, ready for a rune, but he doesn’t want to draw it. He _can’t_ draw it. Magnus is in the bedroom, separated from Alec only by a single door, and he’s having night terrors. Because of Azazel, because of Valentine, because of the Inquisitor.

No. Because of _Alec_.

_Alec_ had been the one to shove him back against that wall. _Alec_ had been the one to strap him into an execution chair. _Alec _had been the one to gag him. _Alec_ had been the one to turn his back on the Inquisitor’s abrupt violation of the Clave’s law, had turned a blind eye to such unauthorized cruelty. If Valentine had contacted them only a few minutes later, if Alec hadn’t run back into that room, if he hadn’t stopped Inquisitor Herondale…

He clenches his hand into a fist.

Even as he chokes back a whimper and blinks away tears, he knows the pain is penitence for his wrongs against Magnus. He tightens his fist until he can feel the blisters burst, until he feels as if his hand is on fire, until his vision dances with black dots. And tighter still. He turns on the water – _hot_ – and sticks his hand under it, washing away all of the blood and pus. The water runs red. He keeps his hand there until he can feel it all the way down to his toes.

It’s worse than all of the times he pounded away at a punching bag, worse than all of the arrows he shot for his fingers to bleed. He wonders: how many times would he have to multiply his pain for it to equal the agony rune? What would it take for Alec to bear the same trauma as Magnus? Burn his body, flay his skin, dip himself in acid. What would it take for Alec to be forgiven, for the love of his life to be okay again?

He would do it. No matter what, he would do it.

But, for now, he painstakingly turns the water off. He picks up his discarded stele and he draws an _iratze_ as if on autopilot. If he purposefully digs his stele in, burns his rune deeper than it needs to go, then there is no one around to stop him anyway. As much as he wants to keep the blisters, the bulbous reminders of his own failings, he cannot allow Magnus to see it. He cannot allow anyone to see it, this shame that curdles in his chest, this aching regret that dwells within him like a living thing. It’s not about him. It’s about _Magnus_, and Alec cannot allow the selfishness of making all of these hurt feelings about himself.

The burns on his hand do not heal up entirely. He will have to reapply another _iratze_ later on in the day, but hopefully he will be up and out of the loft before Magnus even wakes up. Alec doesn’t usually hope for such a morning; and yet, more than he wants to kiss his boyfriend goodbye before he heads to the Institute, he doesn’t want Magnus to see any hint of the still-healing pink of his hand.

He silently slides back under the covers of Magnus’ bed, curling up along the line of his lover’s back but resolutely keeping several inches of distance between them. Close enough that he can feel the reassuring warmth radiating from the warlock’s back. Far enough that Alec feels the distance like a gaping chasm. He wants to be pressed up against Magnus, wants to wrap his arms around him and hold on, wants for them to bleed together until they are not _Magnus and Alec_ but _Magnus-and-Alec_. But that is not what Magnus needs. And it is not Alec’s place to ask for such things.

His hand hurts. But not as much as his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm almost always an absolute slut for the whole 'Magnus loves Alec so much that his magic recognizes him' trope, but this fic explores the effects that trauma plays on relationships. I felt it imperative to show how trauma can lead to us accidentally harming the ones we love, and that being a hurdle for both Magnus and Alec to overcome together.
> 
> Thank you all very much for sticking with me and for leaving such wonderful comments!
> 
> Love you all,  
~PNGuin


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter for this week (sorry guys), featuring Alec's struggles to be the Head of the New York Institute with some good old fashioned guilt and self-loathing on the side.

Longford has officially filed to be transferred to the London Institute. Silverhood demands to be shipped off to Hong Kong. Townsend to Montreal, Lindquist to Jerusalem, Goldleaf to Istanbul, Dovetail to Rio de Janeiro, Wrayburn to Sydney. Sedgewick, Pontmercy, Ravenscar, Bridgestock, and Beauvale back to Idris.

Alec knows all of their first names. Bianca, Asher, Jess, Ramona, Greg, Connor, Patrick, Esme, Petra, Brandon, Felicity, Moira. He’s trained by their sides, he’s spent early hours of the morning staring at monitors with them, he’s gone to weddings and funerals for their loved ones, he’s babysat their children. He _knows_ them, in all of the ways that one can only know someone after years of living and working together in close quarters. But it’s easier to think of them by only their last names, to look at the transfer requests and see their identification numbers instead of their photos, to ignore the years he’s spent beside them.

What’s worse, he wonders: allowing an exodus of shadowhunters from his Institute when he most needs people? Or forcing unwilling, and potentially disloyal, soldiers to remain in New York?

He doesn’t know the answer. But he’s rejected more transfer requests in the first few weeks of his official promotion than he had in the years he had unofficially helped his parents file reports. He finds it a devastating contradiction that so many shadowhunters were willing to work under his own parents – known ex-Circle members – and tolerate the sheer ineffectiveness of Aldertree’s command, only to suddenly decide that _Alec_ is an unforgivable leader. What sort of society must they live in that a proposed weekly cabinet meeting and his own personal life is more reprehensible than a history mixed up with a terrorist organization or complete and utter ineptitude and deception?

Not for the first time, Alec wonders if perhaps his own leadership is more trouble than it’s worth. Jace’s decision to appoint Alec as Head, completely disregarding Inquisitor Herondale’s wishes, only managed to slight the wretched old woman; all it has earned him is the Inquisitor’s scrutinizing glare picking apart every single one of his orders. The Council is similarly weary of his command – due to the events of the past year, also due to his unprecedented age and his family’s notoriously _rebellious_ behavior. But the New York Institute has already experienced the upheaval of three changes of leadership within a single year. The Clave does not have much room for complaint, so they are effectively stuck with Alec for the foreseeable future.

His eyes are swimming, his head is pounding, his limbs feel like lead. He’s been folded over his desk for who knows how long, painstakingly picking apart the purposefully dense wording of Clave missives and reports. Due to relatively recent digitalization, everything is on his tablet and he’s always had a hard time focusing with electronic readings. His eyes have been burning for the better part of the last two weeks, disjointed imprints of words floating past the back of his eyelids. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to see straight after this new position of his. Alec wonders how much judgment he would face if he just printed everything off. Certainly no more than he already deals with.

He leans back in his chair and he can feel as every single one of his vertebrae pop. His back _aches_ and he thinks he’s aged one hundred years in the past few weeks alone. He can’t even move, he’s stuck with his head tilted back staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. There’s a weird stain there; he doesn’t know what it’s from, but he’s just going to blame it on Jace. That seems like the most likely answer.

Before he can help himself, Alec is clenching his hand into a fist. He hadn’t ever gotten around to reapplying a second _iratze_ and the skin of his palm is still pink and irritated from the early hours of the morning. He had barely managed to press a kiss to Magnus’ forehead that morning before he had been forced to flee the loft. Now, sitting alone in his office, he feels that lack of affection like an emptiness in his chest.

He digs his thumb into the still-healing skin of his palm. The searing sting of the action grounds him, but when he looks down and sees his hands a tidal wave of shame crashes over him. It isn’t enough. It is _nothing_ compared to what Magnus is going through. A mere drop in an ocean of pain. An ocean that Alec himself contributed to. They’re both drowning in it.

When he finally glances up, it’s well past sundown. It’s almost as if he has no concept of time when he’s trapped in this office; time either freezes or speeds up while he commits himself to glaring over reports. He checks the clock. Nearly nine at night. Where do the hours go? Almost fifteen hours spent bent over his desk or organizing patrols in the ops center and Alec feels as if he’s accomplished nothing all day. The unfinished reports queued up on his tablet still vastly outnumber the completed, the patrol schedule is still a mess after having lost so many of their people, and Alec is _failing_ at this one job he’s been groomed for since childhood.

But he can’t stay all night, can’t keep at it until the exhaustion drags him down. His shoulders slump and his back aches and the weight of New York presses on him even as he’s standing up and stretching. It almost hurts, that sensation of flexing his arms up for the first time in endless hours, but it’s a good kind of hurt that he relishes in. Like the burn on his hand. A reminder, of the mistakes and the responsibilities and the necessities of his life.

He checks his phone as he gathers up his things. There’s a message from Magnus, asking when Alec will be home. It’s followed by a string of ridiculous emojis that would typically draw a sappy smile to his lips. But now Alec stares at the blurry text message and worries. Has he been staying at work too late? He doesn’t mean to, doesn’t _want_ to, but he’s trying to improve the relations between the shadowhunters and downworlders, trying to retrain all of the racist and cruel tendencies out of his own people, trying to use what little power he has to make things _better_. He’s trying to do something important, something lasting. And – he’s pretty sure – Magnus _knows_ this.

But is Magnus angry at him? Is that why he’s concerned about how late Alec has been out? Does Magnus think that Alec is using work as an excuse to avoid the loft, avoid the weight of his own failings? Is it a thinly veiled request for Alec’s presence, or a means to hide the accusation that curdles in Magnus’ stomach at the very sight of Alec? Insidiously, a part of him whispers that maybe Magnus is worried that Alec is lying about his whereabouts, that maybe Magnus thinks Alec isn’t actually working. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Does Magnus even mean it when he sends strings of heart emojis? _How_ _can he_ possibly mean it, after everything Alec has done, after all of the unforgivable mistakes he’s made?

He’s overthinking. He’s _always_ overthinking. Alec loves Magnus; this, Alec knows, is an absolute truth. He knows his own feelings, knows how he handles love. Romantic love might be new to him, but the soul-deep devotion of love is something Alec is well-versed in. If finding out that his parents used to be active participants in a borderline genocidal terrorist organization did little to squash his love for them, then Alec doesn’t think there’s anything Magnus could ever do that would make Alec quit loving him.

But what about _Magnus_? Magnus, who has spent decades in abusive relationships, who has finally pulled away from the people who had wished him harm, who has closed himself off to love for over a century only to open up his heart to some foolish, clueless, hopeless nephilim. Not even _Camille_ ever forced Magnus into an execution chair.

Is Alec worse than Camille?

How much can Magnus forgive him?

He almost doesn’t want to go to Magnus’ loft. He doesn’t deserve to keep crawling back and begging for repentance; Magnus doesn’t deserve that, either. But not returning would just be some pathetic admittance of his mistakes, of his sins, and Alec doesn’t think he’s strong enough for that. He’s selfish, and cruel, and no doubt his continued presence does nothing but remind Magnus of events that he would far prefer to forget. Alec can’t stay away; he’s had his first taste of this all-consuming love that he feels for Magnus, and he doesn’t think he can turn his back on it. Maybe not even for Magnus’ own sake.

It’s mid-June and the sweltering heat lingers on top of New York like a heavy blanket. Nevertheless, Alec pulls on a thin jacket, if only so that he can have something covering his arms. He dutifully locks up his desk drawers and then his office door with a series of runes that only his own personal stele can undo. Alec has committed himself to instituting an open door policy with the shadowhunters under his command, but that is resolutely only in effect when he happens to be in the office. There are enough sensitive documents in his office to turn the whole New York Shadow World into chaos if the wrong people were to get their hands on them, and Alec really has no desire to go down in history as the Head who burned the city to the ground.

The first half of the nightshift is currently at work in the ops center. They’re operating at half-capacity, which causes Alec not a little amount of concern, but they have few options at the moment. Contrary to popular belief, most demons are no more active at night than during the day; most major missions occur at night simply for the sake of avoiding as many crowds of mundanes as possible, but patrols and the Institute itself run 24/7. Those stuck on the night rotation are no doubt displeased with him. There’s a growing list.

No one interacts with him as he walks down the hall. He doesn’t know if the obvious avoidance is a blessing or a curse. Alec stops in his bedroom before he leaves the Institute. He grabs a change of clothes for tomorrow, even if he doesn’t really need to. Magnus has miraculously managed to clear out an entire drawer and a small section of his closet for Alec’s clothing. Nearly half of Alec’s wardrobe has ended up at Magnus’ loft, not that it’s really saying all that much. Regardless, he has plenty of outfits at Magnus’, and he’s past the point where he needs to bring more every time he spends the night.

But a part of him wants to pack up an overnight bag, wants to walk right through the middle of the ops center on his way out of the Institute. He likes the satisfaction that comes from all of his people watching him leave and knowing that he’s spending his night with Magnus Bane. Let them complain about his sexuality, about his relationship with a downworlder; let them be jealous of this life that he has fought for. Alec relishes in this quiet rebellion of his, something which is entirely his own.

Across the hall, Izzy’s door is resolutely closed. Alec contemplates knocking and wishing her a goodnight before he heads out. He raises his hand, but simply holds it aloft. She wouldn’t answer anyway. Further down the hall is Jace’s bedroom. Alec doesn’t even bother; Jace isn’t at the Institute at all.

Alec hoists his overnight bag higher on his shoulder. He thinks he prefers the cautious tip-toeing at Magnus’ loft to this perpetual loneliness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to touch base on some of my headcanons that come up in this chapter, regarding the shadowhunters and how they run things. The nephilim are intended to be this warrior race of highly trained, highly competent demon slayers. And yet in C*ss*ndr* Cl*re's books they just...aren't. The show does a bit better (with actually giving the New York Institute more than a handful of shadowhunters to handle all of New York City and giving them a badass ops center). But even so I've been incredibly disappointed with how disorganized and incompetent shadowhunters have been portrayed in the books, the movie, and the show. So I'm revamping their entire social structure and giving them a more regimented police/militant hierarchy both in Idris and in the Institutes, hence the 500 or so shadowhunters under Alec's command.
> 
> Thank you all very much for continuing to read. Do me an absolute solid and please leave some shadowhunter surname ideas in the comments because I have gone through almost my entire list!
> 
> Happy reading,
> 
> ~PNGuin


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Magnus in this chapter, and I wish I could say that was a good thing :)
> 
> Please keep checking the tags for any relevant trigger warnings. I'm updating as chapters are added, and please let me know if I have left anything out.

A refreshing gust of cool air greets Alec when he finally steps into the loft. It feels even more relieving when he peels off his jacket and hangs it up on its hook. Although it would be more comfortable to go without the jacket, Alec can’t stand walking around the city with his arms uncovered. It makes him feel bare, exposed, open for attack. It makes him nervous and paranoid and anxious, even if there is no good reason for such things.

The loft is quiet. An unsettling sort of quiet that has been pervading their lives for the last few weeks. Alec used to come over to the sound of jazz or classical or soul music drifting through the rooms, to the sight of Magnus swaying to himself or dancing around the living room. Now, Alec comes over only to see Magnus lounging in one of the armchairs, eyes glassy and unfocused, a half-finished bottle of some mysterious alcohol at his side.

Warlocks typically have a pretty high tolerance, and Magnus even more so than most, but that never stops Alec from worrying over the endless supply of liquor that Magnus has a tendency to reach for. Alec can tell how stressed his boyfriend is simply by watching to see how many servings he makes himself, how closely he holds his own glass. On a good day, Magnus often leaves his drinks scattered around the loft, on the side table or in the kitchen or even out on the balcony. On a bad day, he rarely sets his glasses down, always keeps at least one hand wrapped around the cut crystal, holding it close to his chest.

It’s a bad day.

There’s some unidentifiable liquor in Magnus’ crystal tumbler. Even after being with his boyfriend for eight months, Alec is only slightly less than clueless when it comes to alcohol, and he doesn’t know what sort of concoction the warlock has in his hand. He’s holding it right up against his chest, his ring-clad fingers tight around the glass. Alec wants to take his hand, gently pry the drink from his grasp, and replace the cold unfeelingness of the glass with his own palm.

He methodically unlaces his boots, using the time it buys him to try and breathe, and carefully lines them up out of the way but still near the door. His thigh holster, bow, and quiver all get hung up by his coat on the rack, and his keys get dropped into a little dish on the foyer table. Finally, dressed down and freed from the masks he must wear at the Institute, he walks in Magnus’ direction.

The warlock doesn’t seem to notice him, eyes glassy and faraway like they’ve unanimously been since the Incident. Alec tries calling his name, but it takes three attempts before Magnus is blinking his eyes back into focus and looking up at him.

“Oh, darling, you’re here,” Magnus greets, but doesn’t make any move to stand up.

Alec feels inordinately devastated by that. Their customary greeting after a long day apart is a chaste peck on the lips and a hug. It’s a routine that Alec has come to look forward to, something to keep him going at the end of the day. They’ve kept such a standard for a good portion of their relationship and Alec doesn’t know what to do now that they’ve gone off-script. He’s wrong-footed, thrown off-balance, left standing awkwardly before Magnus like some idiot.

What does it mean, for Magnus to not greet him? Alec can’t remember the last time they _didn’t_ greet each other with a hug and a kiss, at least when they were alone in the loft. Is Magnus angry with him? Upset? Traumatized, furious, heartbroken? Any emotion would be valid and well-warranted, Alec knows; he even expects a mixture of them all. All directed at him. Has Magnus finally sorted through his own emotions enough to come to some conclusion? Has he decided that it really _is_ Alec’s fault, that he can’t stand to be around Alec, that he can’t forgive Alec for this mistake?

Without meaning to, Alec slips into an at-ease posture. He plants his feet shoulder-width apart, tilts his chin down so that he is focusing on his sock-clad feet more than anything, folds his hands together behind his back. His thumbnail digs into the tender still-healing skin of his palm. It burns, almost as bad as when it was first injured, but the pain grounds him. Roots him to his spot and holds him steady, even as his knees tremble and his heart wavers. He digs his nail in deeper, can feel the familiar sting when he finally breaks the skin. A few drops of blood are nothing to him.

He was supposed to heal it. He promised himself that he would. Alec is making too many mistakes, and he can’t help but wonder when someone will finally notice just how shaky his grip on sanity is. How long until the Clave orders a psych evaluation? How long until Alec fails it? How long until Alec is demoted and sent to the Silent Brothers for treatment?

Alec wants to release the fervent grip he has on his hand. He wants to reach out to Magnus, wants to _tell _his boyfriend about the transfer requests and the Clave and the Inquisitor and all of the ways that Alec has been failing. But between the disquieted look on Magnus’ face, the now refilled glass of liquor in his hand, the faraway glaze of his eyes, Alec can’t bring himself to heap even more burdens upon Magnus’ bowed shoulders.

“What’s wrong?” he asks softly. His tongue feels heavy in his mouth, but the words are so ingrained in his heart, in his very soul, that he could say them even while drowning.

Magnus scoffs and the sound is enough to tear at Alec’s heart. He clenches his hand tighter to distract from the pain. “I woke up this morning,” Magnus starts haltingly, “and there were scorch marks on the curtains and…and on the bedsheets.” There are tears in his eyes; his head is down, but Alec doesn’t have to see in order to know what the watery quality of Magnus’ voice means.

It’s good that Magnus isn’t looking at him, because Alec really doesn’t have the greatest poker face. He was supposed to try and change the curtains and the bedsheets before Magnus noticed; yet another way he has failed. He doesn’t know what to say. Does he admit that he knew? Does he explain what happened? Does he ignore or deflect or deny? His mouth is moving before his brain can even give it permission. “Well, that’s an odd choice for interior design,” he blurts out and immediately winces.

A ragged, sobbed chuckle is dragged out of Magnus and Alec is spurred into action by the heartbreaking sound. He folds himself down onto the coffee table in front of Magnus, their knees brushing, and he ducks his head to try and meet the warlock’s gaze. Alec reaches a hand out, but stops just short of touching his shoulder. Magnus hasn’t liked being touched much since.

_“Alec,”_ he forces out, “what did I do?” He sounds devastated, and Alec feels the pain right alongside him. Alec knows how much Magnus hates the idea of _losing control_, especially ever since his body and magic had been used by someone else. He wishes he could do something – anything – to ease Magnus’ fears.

“Shh,” Alec soothes, waiting for the shaking of Magnus’ shoulders to settle. He doesn’t reach out, knows better than to try and push physical affection onto a distressed warlock, but Alec yearns to wrap his arms around the older man. “You had a night terror, sweetheart,” he explains, attempting to strike a healthy balance between gentle and straightforward. Alec probably doesn’t succeed. “There was some warlock fire on the curtains and where your hands were, but you calmed back down pretty quickly.” Without thinking, his other hand reaches out for Magnus. Palm up.

He was supposed to apply another few _iratzes_ for it to properly heal. He was supposed to keep it subtly hidden from his worry-wart of a boyfriend. He was supposed to try and protect Magnus from yet another weight upon his shoulders. Not for the first time, not for the last time, Alec has failed miserably.

Magnus freezes almost instantaneously, his breath trapped in his lungs and his gaze resolutely narrowed in on the tender pink of Alec’s palm. There’s a small blood-crusted crescent moon indent in the middle, from where Alec had been digging his thumbnail into his skin. Magnus’ hands come up to frame Alec’s, close enough that heat radiates from the warlock, but still centimeters away from touching. Alec can see Magnus’ hands trembling, just that little bit.

“This is a burn,” he states, voice whisper-quiet and damning in the silence of the loft. “From warlock fire.”

For half of a second, Alec contemplates lying. Or half-lying. Maybe he does have a burned hand, but the burn came from trying to cook something in the subpar kitchen at the Institute or from a patrol gone awry or from literally _anything but Magnus_. He ultimately vetoes the notion. His and Magnus’ relationship is built upon trust and honesty, and he can’t find it within himself to lie over something like this.

“It was my fault,” Alec insists immediately, “Magnus, baby, it’s _my_ fault. Not yours.” But Magnus is already trying to pull away, shaking his head to himself, as if he can’t even fathom this lapse in control. “You were having a night terror and I reached out and touched you. It isn’t your fault,” he reiterates, as if he’s a broken record. But this is the sort of thing that needs to be repeated until it finally rings true in Magnus’ own head.

The warlock abruptly stands up and takes several large steps away from the couch, away from Alec. “I hurt you. I _burned_ you,” he chokes out. “I’m so sorry, Alexander.” He turns to the balcony doors and paces the space in front of them, all tensed energy and regret that Alec wants to help him banish.

“It was because of your nightmare. You’re magic lashed out. It was an accident,” Alec states solemnly. The shadowhunter stands up and tries to move closer to Magnus, but his boyfriend barely conceals a flinch back at the movement. Alec freezes mid-step, hands half-raised, and his heart grows cold.

Magnus starts flitting about the loft in that thinly-veiled frantic way that he slips into when the stress grows to be too much for the man. Alec wants nothing more than to help his boyfriend dispel all of the bad emotions collecting like cobwebs in his chest; but he doesn’t know how to help and he’s paralyzed by his own ineptitude.

The warlock pauses in his pacing, bringing one of his hands up to pinch the bridge of his nose. His fingers tremble where they meet his skin. Alec wants to reach out and calm the tremors with his own sure grip, but he doesn’t think Magnus wants to be touched. So he hangs back, folding his hands behind himself. He thinks about digging his thumb into the meat of his hurt palm. He doesn’t.

“I have some business I need to attend to at Pandemonium,” Magnus suddenly speaks up, breaking the heavy quiet between them. Alec can’t help but wonder if he’s telling the truth or if he just made this up. “You’re welcome to stay here. I’ll be out late; don’t bother waiting up for me.”

As if either of them are capable of sleeping without the other, as if they don’t both know that Alec is going to stay up all night waiting for the inevitable. Sometimes, Alec worries that they’ve grown too codependent, that they’ve broken down enough walls between them that it leaves them defenseless against each other. That’s the risk one takes with love, but it’s a weight that they gladly bear. Or maybe it’s just Alec.

“Magnus, we need to talk about this,” he speaks up, slipping into an argumentative tone before he can stop himself. He’s tired of dogging around all of the issues from the Azazel Incident. They need to _talk_, and that isn’t something Alec can do by himself.

He trails Magnus as the warlock flits about his loft, gathering up everything he’s going to need for his night out at Pandemonium. They both know it’s an empty gesture, an act of running away, of giving Magnus somewhere _to_ run away. Part of Alec contemplates cornering Magnus, but he rejects the idea immediately. He doesn’t begrudge Magnus this coping mechanism, even as it hurts both of them. Alec also has the tendency to run away and lie low whenever he’s hurting. Sometimes, they’re too similar.

And then Magnus is conjuring up a portal and stepping through with barely even a _‘goodnight, darling’_ tossed over his shoulder.

Alec is left standing alone in his boyfriend’s loft. Even though the June heat is sweltering, he feels immeasurably cold. Magnus left without even a hug and a kiss. No _‘I love you’ _pressed against Alec’s cheek.

His knees practically give under him and he collapses back onto the couch. Magnus’ empty glass is still on the table beside him, and he has half the mind to hurl the damn thing at the wall, let it explode into a million shards just as his heart is threatening to do. Guilt settles, heavy and cloying, at the thought. He’d just have to clean it up and then apologize to Magnus. He has a lot to apologize to Magnus for already; no need to add another reason.

In that moment, Alec realizes something that chills him to the bone. They can’t continue on like this. Not with the nightmares, not with the aching chasm that is splitting between the two of them, not with the damning silence that pervades their lack of conversations, not with this sudden cold-shoulder that has replaced their love.

Something needs to change. Or else something is going to break.

Alec heaves out a sigh that borders on a sob, but he takes a deep breath and runs his hands over his face. He stands up and collects the laptop bag that he has to bring with him every time he comes over to Magnus’ before plopping gracelessly onto the couch. He’s been reading over and filing reports all day, and yet he still has plenty of work to do. If he’s going to stay up and wait for Magnus, then he might as well get something done.

It’s going to be a long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The main point behind this addition to the series is the interplay between Alec's trauma and how he perceives/deals with other peoples' trauma all at the same time. Also, the show did NOT provide sufficient fallout from the Azazel Incident and the body swap, so I felt it imperative to delve deeper into the effects it had on Magnus and, ultimately, on his relationship with Alec.
> 
> I promise you all, I am incapable of dragging out relationship drama and I hate sad endings, so Magnus and Alec will always end up okay in this series.
> 
> Thank you all for continuing to read (and for commenting with shadowhunter names...I have a list of over fifty and I've already blown through them, so keep them coming). Please leave a comment and kudos! They are my life force and I need them to live.
> 
> ~PNGuin


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a longer chapter today, but certainly not one which is any happier :)
> 
> No major warnings apply to this chapter, but there is discussion of Izzy's yin fen addiction and the host of issues that come with drug addiction/rehabilitation.

It’s nearing two in the morning and Alec is struggling just to keep his eyes open. He’s read the same sentence at least seventeen times and he isn’t even able to say what it’s about. Maybe something having to relate to the unprecedented increase in demon sightings the last month? Or it could be a report on the continued subpar performance of too many of his people in the Institute. He doesn’t have the faintest idea and, honestly, he doesn’t believe he will be gaining any sort of enlightenment soon.

But Magnus isn’t home yet.

Alec isn’t _worried_ about him, _per se_. It isn’t that he fears for Magnus’ safety – Magnus is more than capable of taking care of himself – nor does Alec fear infidelity of any sort – because he _knows_ Magnus and, regardless of how rocky their relationship might be at present, Magnus would never stoop to such lows. That isn’t what compels Alec to stay half-awake and slowly listing to the side of the couch in his boyfriend’s lonely apartment. He just isn’t able to sleep, not with that chilling ache settling right over his chest, not without Magnus near him to beat back that encroaching coldness.

He just wants Magnus to get home already. He just wants to drag himself to the ridiculously lush bed and burrow beneath the silken sheets and curl up with his arms around the love of his life and their legs tangled. Alec just wants to sleep without needing to worry about Magnus being upset and alone at Pandemonium.

The sudden shrill ringing of his phone has Alec jerking upright and blinking his heavy eyes open. When had he closed them? He’s reaching for his cell and answering the call without even thinking about it, but his mind does half-heartedly remind him that it’s not Magnus’ personalized ringtone.

_“Alec, I need your help.”_

It’s Clary. The very last person he usually wants to hear from, except maybe Simon. Her voice sounds shaky, either with fear or adrenaline, he can’t tell, but it makes worry reluctantly pool in his churning gut. And, of course, she needs something from him. And, of course, Alec is already scrambling to his feet and heading for the door. He almost wants to scoff at himself; always a loyal dog, ready to jump whenever anyone asks him to.

_“Izzy isn’t at the Institute. I’ve tried calling her phone, but she left it in her room. And I can’t track her; she must have activated a blocking rune. Alec, I don’t know what to do!”_

His concern ratchets up immediately, and he scrambles to shove his feet into his combat boots. He’s not even wearing socks, and he knows that blisters will result from his rushed state but he doesn’t even care. He gathers up his stele and his weapons with the single-mindedness of a soldier going off to war and he feels the weight and mask of his duty sliding back into place, locking all of his too-human turmoil back behind the façade of a shadowhunter.

Izzy is missing. _Relapse_, is the insidious word that rings out in his head. Just as he most feared would happen. That Izzy, for all that she’s headstrong and independent, would rely too heavily on remaining so, even while in the lasting throes of withdrawal. That she would waver under the strain of addiction, that she would turn back to the streets and the desperate vampires that lurk there before she would dare turn to her own brother for help.

But he doesn’t have the luxury to ruminate over his failure at the moment. “Is Jace at the Institute?” he asks Clary, settling with too much ease into the role of commanding officer.

Clary almost scoffs on the other end and Alec equally wants to snap at her for the attitude and also agree with her on the sentiment. _“No. He’s at the Hunter’s Moon, or something. And I doubt he’s going to be answering any calls from me anytime soon.”_

Nor any calls from _Alec_, for that matter. Jace is in one of his notoriously ridiculous moods; Alec doesn’t even need the _parabatai_ bond to be able to tell that much. He knows that Jace would drop everything in a heartbeat if he found out that Izzy was missing – especially ever since Jace found out about Izzy’s _yin fen_ addiction – but something in Alec makes him doubt that his brother would even be sober enough to assist.

“Okay. What’s the state of her room? Can you find any clues that might lead us to where she would’ve gone?” Alec wonders, even as he’s planning out all the worst-case scenarios and mentally mapping out all of the areas that are infamous for bleeder dens.

_“Um, I don’t know!”_ Clary cries and Alec almost wants to shake her. _“Her room is trashed and I have no clue where she would’ve gone!”_

Of course Clary doesn’t have any ideas. She’s been part of the Shadow World for roughly ten months – almost an entire year already – and her training has vastly improved, but her perception of the politics between the different factions of their world is still horribly skewed. Alec isn’t surprised, but he is frustrated. He tells – or, rather, he _orders_ – Clary to stay at the Institute and wait for him, and then he’s hanging up and sprinting out of Magnus’ loft.

Even before he hits the street, he has a speed rune activated and Magnus’ contact pulled up on his phone. He doesn’t even think before he calls it, so used to reaching out for his boyfriend whenever he needs help or support that it doesn’t even register that maybe he shouldn’t. Magnus is at Pandemonium, conducting business or dancing the night away or maybe even both. And, considering their – their _what_? fight, argument, strongly-worded discussion? – Alec doesn’t think he really has a right to ask anything. Guilt settles heavy as a stone in his stomach. Magnus is still dealing with his own trauma; he doesn’t need Alec’s own family issues to add to the burden.

Alec ends the call before Magnus picks up. A dark part of his mind wonders if Magnus even _would_ have answered.

It doesn’t matter anyway. He goes back through his contacts and reluctantly glares down at the name _‘Raphael Santiago’_ in his phone. Part of Alec still hates the vampire, still holds a grudge for finding him with his fangs deep in his little sister’s arm. He recognizes that it’s a fearful part of himself, perhaps even a violent one, raised by the rhetoric of his parents and the Clave and his people to inherently distrust downworlders. The other part of Alec feels guilt for his immediate reaction to the situation, to how it affected Magnus’ relationship with Raphael and the fallout of Alec’s own first instinct to _attack_. He wants to think that it’s this part of him that is the person he _wants_ to be, the person that he can maybe one day be because of Magnus.

Alec presses the call button and waits with bated breath. There’s a good chance that Santiago won’t answer at all, given the admittedly uneasy relationship between the two of them. Too much bad blood. But, Alec hopes that perhaps the vampire will answer, since they’ve already spoken in person regarding the downworld cabinet that Alec is attempting to start. Santiago has offered his own hesitant support of the idea, but Alec isn’t sure if that’s because he actually has some faith in the concept or just because Magnus asked Raphael to humor a dumb idealistic nephilim.

_“Lightwood,”_ said vampire picks up before Alec can continue his spiraling train of thought.

“Is Izzy at the Dumort?” he demands immediately, voice coming out both sharper and crueler than Santiago perhaps rightly deserves, but Alec is too frantic for Izzy’s sake to care much at the moment.

_“No. Isabelle hasn’t been to the Dumort in a few weeks,”_ the response is mutually as short as Alec’s own voice, but he can nevertheless hear a tremor of concern dripping into the vampire’s tone. _“Is she missing?”_

Dread curls around Alec’s heart and constricts. If Izzy hasn’t gone back to her main source, then it’s more likely that she’s slipped up and is perhaps even willing to turn to less dependable and trustworthy vampires. He almost doesn’t want to tell Santiago, doesn’t want to let this outsider into the inner workings of his family’s drama. Bad enough that Clary had noticed before him, bad enough that Jace is MIA. _Alec_ is supposed to be the one taking care of his family, not moping in the loneliness of his boyfriend’s apartment while his relationship threatens to fall apart.

“She’s not at the Institute,” Alec reluctantly drags the words out. He doesn’t have the luxury to be picky about help. “Her room was trashed, she left her phone behind, and she’s blocking tracking attempts.”

_“I can send my people out, have them check with any known bleeder dens to see if she’s gone there,”_ Raphael suggests immediately and Alec has to suppress the vitriol that bubbles in his veins.

“Izzy doesn’t need to be around a bunch of vampires right now,” he barely manages to not snap the statement out, to not sneer the word _vampire_ like so many of his people do.

A part of him seethes at the idea of Santiago and his clan of blood-suckers being anywhere near his sister while she’s still recovering from a _yin fen_ addiction. He shuts the thought down and hates himself a little more for ever believing the cruel rhetoric of the Clave that still, even now, often colors his perception of downworlders.

Raphael is silent on the line, and Alec is almost certain that the vampire hung up on him. _“You’re right,”_ the older vampire admits, albeit reluctantly. _“But I will still check in with what dens I can. See if she’s been to any of them looking for a fix. I’ll contact you if I find anything.”_

And that should be the end of that. A simple agreement, them pursuing the same goal, for Izzy’s sake. But there’s a bad taste at the back of Alec’s throat. He’s already messed up so many of his own personal relationships; he doesn’t want his bout of failure to bleed into his professional life as well. “Santiago,” he blurts out before the vampire can hang up. “Thank you,” Alec says, and the words aren’t quite as difficult as he had expected.

_“Don’t thank me yet, Lightwood.”_

The call disconnects and Alec is already pushing the conversation away from the forefront of his mind. There are more pressing thoughts swirling in his head, enough that they leave him feeling breathless and dizzy. He blinks to try and clear the exhaustion that spots his vision and he pauses just long enough to activate a stamina rune to hold him over for the night. And then he focuses entirely on getting back to the Institute and finding some way to locate his sister.

Izzy is his first priority. Everything else can wait.

* * *

When he makes it to the Institute, he’s bombarded with a sudden slew of responsibilities that have built up in the sparingly few hours since Alec left. Darkwater is heading patrols for the night, and he intercepts Alec to report four different injuries: Maplewood stumbled upon a _shax_ infestation in Queens, Crosskill fell nearly five stories during a fight with some _mantid_ demons, Sunbow was poisoned by a _ravener_, and Pounceby got mixed up into an unexpected police shoot-off.

That last one is the most problematic for Alec; the NYPD has already issued an APB and Alec needs to get in touch with his contacts on the force to try and suppress any investigations against the Institute, and then he’ll have to give – yet another – lecture to his people on the importance of avoiding any encounters with the mundane law enforcement.

And all of this, of course, is reported to him before he even makes it halfway through the ops center. Technically speaking, Alec is off the clock and all official claims need to be filed through the night director and compiled for him to read in the morning. But he’s awake and he has to walk through the main hub of activity and there’s not an easy way for him to sidestep all of his responsibilities. Not when some of his people are injured and many more want to transfer away and they’re still trying to recover after Kaelie’s string of murders.

There’s too much riding on his shoulders for Alec to simply delegate all of his obligations away. Perhaps any other Head of an Institute would allow the night shift to work out their own troubles; but there are far too many over-eager eyes watching him, waiting for him to slip up. So he does what he can to triage damage, issuing out succinct orders to make up for the people they have injured and the sudden void in the chain of command. It only takes twenty-five minutes before any impending disasters are averted and Alec can breathe easy once more, but that’s twenty-five minutes longer of Izzy missing and him doing nothing to fix that.

The second that he’s freed from shadowhunters needing direction, Alec is all but sprinting for Izzy’s room. Her door is cracked open and when he pushes his shoulder against it to duck past the threshold, he sees what looks like the aftermath of a tornado. Her room is often messy now that their parents no longer do weekly room checks, but even this goes beyond her typical bouts of uncleanliness.

Clothes are strewn every which way – an alarming fact, given how carefully Izzy typically treats her possessions – and the sheets have been half-dragged from the bed, the mountains of makeup and nail polish always piled up on her vanity have been tossed aside and he can see stains from where bottles have exploded against the walls. Her floor-length mirror has been shattered, jagged shards of glass haphazardly scattered on the ground; he can see blood on some of them.

Unbidden, he remembers when he and Izzy were children. She used to throw the _worst_ tantrums. Looking back on it, Alec doesn’t even know what they were usually over; unimportant things, like wanting to stay up past bedtime or wear a certain thing that Mom wouldn’t let her or to get exactly what she needed from Dad. Really, he thinks, they had all been about the same thing. Attention, any amount of it, from the parents who had always been away for some reason or another.

Alec wonders if that’s the reason for this as well.

But he doesn’t ruminate over his thoughts for long, because then Clary is hurrying up to him. She’s distraught – which isn’t unusual; Clary always seems distraught over something in the Shadow World – and he can see the telltale glimmer of tears pooling in her eyes. In her hand is one of Izzy’s shirts and the younger girl is clutching at it desperately, as if it holds all the answers she’s looking for.

“Alec, I’ve tried everything!” she cries and he almost wants to roll his eyes. If she had tried everything, then Izzy would already be found. They must be missing something.

He takes a deep breath to cool his own annoyance and then plants both of his hands on Clary’s shoulders. Alec doesn’t know if it helps her any, but he does intend for the motion to be grounding, maybe even soothing. “We’ll find her, but first you need to calm down,” he says, leaning his head down so that she’s forced to meet his eyes.

Clary nods and draws in a breath, wiping at her eyes and forcibly composing herself. “Okay, right,” she agrees and Alec lets his hands slide off of her shoulders once he’s sure that she’s no longer borderline hysterical.

“Have you been trying to use that shirt to track her?” he asks, straight to business just as it’s been drilled into him since childhood. He has a mission, and the regimented necessity behind it is equal parts comforting and invigorating.

“Yeah, but I haven’t been getting anything out of it. Nothing’s working.”

Alec takes the shirt from her. He doesn’t recognize it, although that isn’t saying much. Izzy has too much clothing, if you ask him. But that’s part of the problem. If Clary has been trying to use just _anything_ of Izzy’s to track her, then it might not be strong enough.

“We need something with more value to Izzy,” he tells the redheaded girl. “The stronger the connection, the better the tracking will be.”

Clary immediately sets off to start scouring the room for anything that might hold more sentimental meaning to Izzy, but Alec doesn’t need to wonder over all of the various trinkets and clutter that his sister has collected over the years. He tiptoes past the strewn about clothes, careful to avoid the scattered bottles of perfumes and polish, and heads straight for the old mahogany wardrobe that Izzy had inherited from their _abuela_ when she had been five.

In the utter warzone of the room, the wardrobe remains one of the few objects left unharmed. One of the doors is partially open, the same door that has always struggled with staying latched. Alec used to have to open it fully and check for any demons, every single night like clockwork, until Izzy was almost eight. He pulls on the door’s handle now and finds no monsters, but instead lets his eyes settle on the floppy scrap of faded green fabric nestled in a place of pride on one of the shelves.

Kay-Kay is the stuffed animal’s name, some garbled up version of the Spanish term _el caimán _that Izzy had babbled out at a young age. It used to be a brilliant forest green, now washed off into some translucent version of the color. One of its beady black eyes had long ago fallen off, carefully replaced with a neon orange button that’s a few sizes too large. There are little scars from where tears and rips had opened up, and had since been painstakingly stitched back together by the clumsy fingers of a child. Once upon a time, it might have been an alligator. Now, it looks more like some horrifically stretched out green monstrosity that would be more at home in the New York sewers than any swamp.

A fond little grin tugs at his lips. He still remembers how they had first stumbled upon Kay-Kay. Their mother had taken him and Izzy, only nine and five at the time, to some state fair. A rare occurrence, one that had only happened that single time in his recollection. Izzy, still baby-faced and spoiled, had seen the alligator hanging up at one of the booths and immediately made grabby-hands for it. Alec had obligingly thrown darts at balloons until the man working the booth had awarded Alec with the stuffed toy. Mom had shown a rare mercy by turning a blind eye to the whole thing.

Kay-Kay quickly became Izzy’s most favoritest thing in the world (in her words), a lofty position that miraculously survived until her childhood had come to an abrupt and forceful end. Alec’s own toys and blankets, all the soft things in his life, had been confiscated by his parents when he had turned six. Izzy, at least, had been allowed to continue until she had been eight. When Mom and Dad took Kay-Kay from Izzy, she had thrown a four-day-long tantrum; she had been inconsolable, even by her beloved older brother, and she had refused to eat or sleep for the entire time. Their parents had planned to simply wait it out, but Alec and Jace had taken initiative and had snuck into their room to steal the toy back from them. They had managed to keep the alligator successfully hidden until Mom and Dad had given up on it and had stopped trying to find it.

He holds it gently now, careful of the haphazardly sewn seams and the dangling limbs that have lost too much stuffing, and thinks of the scabby knees and snorting laughter of a younger Izzy. It makes him feel old, an ancient age that is incongruous to the years he’s actually lived. He wonders if Jace and Izzy feel that same heaviness, if they can sense that loss of childhood as viscerally as he can. He hopes that they can’t.

As soon as he activates a tracking rune, he can feel the faintest hint of her presence. Shadowhunter tracking, at its finest, is much like holding onto a thread and following it right to the target. But when the signal is being blocked and there’s only a vague inclination of direction, it is more like a wave that slowly builds, a weak tide that gradually pulls him along. He closes his eyes and lets the immediate world around him bleed away until all he can sense is the scattered presence of his sister. Alec tries to lose himself to the ebb and flow of the tracking; he doesn’t attempt to latch onto it, as that would merely cause the faint hints to disappear like smoke in the air. Instead, he lets it wash over him and he floats down the stream that will lead him to Izzy.

It isn’t a perfect science, not with Izzy so thoroughly blocking his tracking attempts. Having Jace’s help would improve his chances, would increase the signal pointing in Izzy’s direction, but Alec can’t worry about where his brother is now. When he draws himself back into his own mind and opens his eyes, he has enough. He has a direction, has an idea of where to go. That’s all he needs.

“Come on, Fray,” he calls over his shoulder, even as he’s rushing out of the room. He can hear her resulting huff, but she dutifully trails behind him.

They pause only long enough to grab weapons and steles – like _Hell_ Alec is going to follow after his withdrawal-addled sister through vampire territory without something in his hands – and Alec forces himself to slow down enough to double-check all of Clary’s gear. Their last few weapons masters have been astoundingly lax in their duties, and the Institute has been facing an unprecedented increase in poorly sharpened and maintained weapons. He’s already had to reprimand Thrushcross twice, all because the bastard doesn’t want to properly tend to weapons used by a leader who is dating a downworlder. One more strike and Alec will be forced to send yet another shadowhunter packing.

What’s worse, he wonders: not having enough people to run the Institute, or having the Institute full of people willing to potentially endanger lives just to prove some petty point? It seems his entire role of Head is merely playing a dangerous game of lesser evils.

The seraph blade that Clary has been using looks acceptable even after Alec’s third inspection and he hands it over. His bow and quiver are both already slung over his shoulder; those always go with him when he heads to Magnus’. Alec religiously does all of the maintenance on his own bow and there is only a very small handful of people who ever have permission to so much as touch it, but he still gives it a quick glance-over just for paranoia’s sake. He grabs a seraph blade and a spare dagger to slide into his thigh holster and, with one hand cradling the toy alligator from his sister’s childhood and the other dutifully staying right by the handle of his blade, he leads Clary out of the Institute.

The familiar weight of his gear has him immediately sinking into a heightened patrol mindset. He has a sister to find, and potentially save.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will the angst ever end? Eventually, my dear readers.
> 
> Thank you all very much for continuing to read! Please leave me kudos and comments, and have a lovely week!
> 
> ~PNGuin


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Sorry that this took longer than expected. Life is a bitch but now I'm on break for a month so maybe I'll actually get my life together and work on this more.)
> 
> Please check tags for any relevant warnings. If I have missed anything, please let me know.
> 
> Some lovely Alec and Izzy interaction, guest-starring Clary.

Clary has improved a lot in the ten months since her abrupt invasion into his life, and while Alec might still be half-reluctant to admit it out loud, that doesn’t make it any less true. He’s spent enough early morning training sessions pounding _form, patience, strategy_ into her head that he thinks it’s finally gotten through that thick skull of hers and she’s graduated from stationary punching bags to actually being able to spar with Alec or his siblings. She’s still far from a standard she _should _be at and Alec is fairly certain that Max would be able to wipe the floor with her, but it’s nevertheless an impressive amount of improvement that she’s made in less than a full year.

Alec has seen her on patrols, has personally taken her out under his own command to keep an eye on her progress, which is why he notices just how antsy and unsettled she is as they wander down New York streets looking for Izzy. Her constant shifting and the way that she twitches at every slight noise is setting him on edge; he can feel the tension building the longer they go with no sign of Izzy, the more Clary freaks out, the more Alec stews within his own thoughts. Usually, Clary doesn’t ever shut up; it’s obnoxious and frustrating to no end, but always succeeds in drawing Alec out of his own head. The quiet is eating him up inside, carving out a hollowness in his stomach.

“The signal is leading to Upper Manhattan,” he states, blunt and sudden in the quiet between them. It’s a dumb thing to say; they have very clearly been heading in the direction of Upper Manhattan ever since they left the Institute half an hour ago. Not even Clary could be unobservant enough to miss the distinct trend of their trajectory, but Alec needs to say something, needs to fill the void of painful emptiness between them that is sucking at his soul like a vacuum. He needs to find Izzy.

“And that’s…_good_?” Clary guesses, shrugging a little helplessly at the look Alec tosses over his shoulder.

He clutches tighter to the ragged alligator in his hand and thinks of skinned knees and a snorting laugh, lets the wash of Izzy’s presence drift over his soul and guide him to his sister. It’s definitely pointing them towards Upper Manhattan, and Alec feels the draw in his gut that insists he should trust his tracking abilities, even as a cruel, cold part of his mind questions it.

“There aren’t bleeder dens in Manhattan,” Alec tells Clary, tone clipped. “Nor very many vampires at all.”

“Maybe not that you know of, but it’s a big city,” the girl retorts with a distinct scoff. Typical of Clary, to assume that her mundane knowledge of New York applies so readily to the Shadow World of New York.

“Five boroughs,” he explains curtly, as if it answers anything. The clueless expression on his unwanted companion has him rolling his eyes. “Five factions of the Shadow World. New York City wasn’t built by mundanes; that’s not just a coincidence. Shadowhunters dominate Manhattan, the wolves have the Bronx, warlocks stick to Brooklyn, seelies stay around Staten Island. And vampires keep to themselves in Queens.”

“So, what, no vampires visit Manhattan?”

“They do, but they’re less likely to cause trouble so close to the Institute. Santiago and his clan have less jurisdiction outside of Queens. So vampires tend to stay away.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Clary continues as Alec takes a sudden left and leads them down an alley. “Izzy would know all of that. If she isn’t seeking out any bleeder dens or dealers, then maybe she isn’t relapsing!”

It sounds like promising evidence, but Alec is far too paranoid and concerned for Izzy to feel even an ounce of the conviction Clary so readily latches on to. He can hear the desperate hope in Clary’s voice and he wonders if she even believes herself. It seems like it’s too good to be true, especially so soon after Izzy decided to go cold turkey. Alec can’t think of any other explanation for why Izzy’s room had been trashed, why she had so suddenly fled the Institute, why she’s so desperate to not be found. If she isn’t relapsing, then what could Izzy possibly be doing?

Alec thinks of peanut butter and jelly surprise sandwiches and all of the times he didn’t try harder to talk with Izzy. He wants to pull his own hair out, wants to cry or scream in frustration, wants to curse the world. He settles for clenching his free hand into a fist until his nails leave crescent moons in his palm. Magnus never got around to healing it before he fled for Pandemonium, and Alec never managed to convince himself to redraw the _iratze_ there. The skin is still tender and pink. It’s useful, for his purposes.

They lapse back into an intrusive, pervasive, corrosive quiet. Alec usually likes the quiet, usually thrives in in. Now, it chokes him like a physical thing, clogs the back of his throat and makes him taste bile. He might throw up. Instead, he meets the half-bead half-button gaze of Izzy’s prized alligator and he lets blood collect in the little divots of his palm.

It’s nearing four in the morning and he hasn’t slept in almost twenty-four hours, hasn’t slept well in over two weeks, but he continues on with the single-mindedness that guided him through the entirety of his teenaged years. Ignore the exhaustion weighing his limbs down, ignore the agony that claws at his heart, ignore the thought of what Magnus is doing at Pandemonium, ignore the concerns about where Jace has fled to, ignore the worry that grows the longer Clary is quiet at his side, ignore the near two hundred shadowhunters who have expressed the wish to transfer, ignore the Clave’s oppressive presence always breathing down his back, _ignore ignore ignore_.

Find Isabelle. That’s his mission. That’s what matters.

He lets everything else drain away, bleed out through those little crescents dug into his healing palm, and his mind drifts in the stream of tracking that will eventually lead to Izzy. His feet move as if on autopilot, until he’s marching down some neighborhood in the East Village that sparks memories. His favorite burger joint – the one that he keeps dragging a half-reluctant Magnus to – is just a few blocks over. But his feet lead him a different path, one which he recalls from a childhood ended far too long ago.

Suddenly, with an abrupt clarity, he doesn’t need Kay-Kay the alligator to guide him. He knows where Izzy is, and it’s not in some back alley looking for a fix. It’s in a park, small but well-kept, with a charming little playground that features a swing set and colorful jungle gym. He knows the park’s layout in the way that all childhood memories are, hazy and warm, like a half-remembered summer day that stretches into an infinite possibility.

Mom used to bring them here, back when being children was still halfway acceptable and she could sneak them out. Back when Maryse Lightwood cared enough to even attempt such things. There’s the pond where Jace was once chased by ducks, and the tall oak tree where his and his siblings’ initials were carved into one of the highest branches, and the monkey bars where they used to have races and try to outdo each other.

It’s a little worse for wear now. With his night vision rune, Alec can make out chipped paint and worn hinges, there’s inappropriate graffiti scattered here and there, and it could probably do with a refill of gravel. A bitter, bruised part of his heart can’t help but feel as if he’s looking into a mirror. He, too, is nothing but chipped paint and worn away metal. It feels like a mockery.

The park is abandoned and dark this late at night – this early in the morning? – and it’s only illuminated by a handful of street lamps and the weak glimmer of the moon. But Alec can still see a lone figure sullenly slumped, very slightly rocking in one of the swings. He doesn’t even need his night vision rune to pick out his sister. He would recognize the set of her shoulders anywhere.

But he doesn’t approach. Not immediately. Alec stops in his place and turns to look at the redhead who has dutifully followed him all night. He doesn’t think he could stop the tremble of gratitude that stirs his heart, not even if he actually wanted to. Clary’s eyes meet his and she’s nodding in understanding even before he can force his words out.

“Sibling talk?” she guesses easily.

He finds it a bit unsettling how readily she’s able to read him and his siblings, but even Alec can’t deny that her uncanny ability to understand his family hasn’t benefited him. “Yeah,” he breathes out, barely even a noise.

She accepts that without complaint, a fact which speaks more to her own exhaustion and fatigue than even the bruise-dark bags under her eyes. A spark of concern worms reluctantly in Alec’s core, but Clary continues before he can mention anything. “Want me to stick around and wait for you two, or head back to the Institute?” she asks quietly.

“Institute,” Alec decides immediately; he holds back a wince at how dismissive the single, curt word surely sounds and he tries again. “Thank you for your help, but you look dead on your feet, Fray. Go get some rest. And I don’t want to see you on duty until at least noon,” he orders, voice softening out in the still air between them.

Clary huffs and opens her mouth – no doubt to argue or protest – but a single raised eyebrow has her slumping where she stands. She nods, a slow motion that seems more effort than it’s worth. Alec half-thinks to rescind the order; he isn’t sure Clary should be out alone, not in her state. But she’s turning away and walking off while Alec wastes time ruminating over his own indecision.

One hand tightens its grip on the alligator. The other digs a vicious thumbnail into tender skin. He can simultaneously feel the well-loved softness of fabric and the welling of blood under his ministrations. The contradiction jars him, dislocates him from his own body and leaves him adrift. Just as it always has, ever since his toys and blankets had been ripped from him and replaced with the cold grip of a sword in his hands. He misses softness, misses gentleness, misses compassion and quiet and understanding. How long has he gone without it? How long has he withheld it from others?

“Clary,” he calls, voice gentled by his somber reflections. She looks back at him over her shoulder, and he finally sees her for what she is. Not the spiteful little brat that he once mistook her for, but rather a strong and kind-hearted girl who is struggling to find her place in the world. He swallows back the wave of self-hatred that burns at the back of his throat. How much worse did he make everything for her, for all of them?

But he can fix it. He can. He has to.

“Thursday. Lunch. Your choice,” he stumbles out, succinct and brusque. His throat is tight from the memory of too many harsh words, too many cruel and hasty judgments. He couldn’t get out more words if he tried.

He looks at Clary now and he thinks of Izzy, who is trying so hard to stay clean on her own and wearing herself to the bone, and he thinks of Jace, who is throwing himself into extra patrols only to disappear from the Institute in his sparing free time, and he thinks of Magnus, who can’t ever seem to sleep for the nightmares that plague him. He thinks of his mother, of his father’s indiscretions, and he thinks of Max, who is still young enough that he’s the one caught between it all. And Alec wonders when he started thinking of Clary as being part of that picture, when he started thinking of Clary as another member of his little family.

Her eyes widen and she blinks as if lost, before a hesitant smile curls at the edges of her lips. It should be a nice expression, except Alec thinks he can see cracks forming in the fatigued lines of her face. Like a porcelain doll, shattering under the pressure. But she nods, as if everything is fine between them, as if it was never bad to begin with. “I’ll hold you to that,” she tells him with a pointed look, before she’s walking away.

Alec watches her until she disappears around the corner of a street. And then he turns his focus back to his little sister, idly swinging back and forth surrounded in a pool of gravel and weak moonlight. He draws in a fortifying breath of humid summer air; it’s suffocating and reminds him of how the air felt on the night of his first official patrol. Alec can almost taste the iron tang of blood, the acidic burn of demon ichor. He wishes that his monsters were the physical sort.

He steadily walks closer to Izzy, careful to make his footsteps purposefully loud as he approaches, just in case her mind is addled enough to not quite hear him coming. She doesn’t show any indication of noticing him, not even as he settles in the swing right beside hers. The seat is too low and Alec’s legs too long, his knees awkwardly pushed up against his stomach. Not for the first time, Alec reflects on how out of place, how isolated, he has always felt at playgrounds. Even as a child, he had never known what was expected of him. He had avoided the mundane children like the plague, even when a deep-rooted yearning to go play tag or hide-and-seek dwelled within him. Alec has never been much for _playing_, but he isn’t sure if that’s due to his own nature, or due to how his parents raised him.

Izzy is silent, but Alec has known her since the day she was born, and even before that. In those first fleeting years of her life, it had been Alec who had often been the best at distinguishing what she had been crying for. The hungry cry had been different from the tired cry, and both had been different from the want attention cry. And, later, Alec had always been the one to sit with her after her tantrums, or to dry her tears when she had been silent and mopey.

To any outsider, Isabelle looks completely fine. Maybe too quiet, too still, but not unusual. But Alec isn’t an outsider. He’s his sister’s keeper, a big brother, and he can see the fine tremble of Izzy’s shoulders, the downward tilt of her head that ensures her hair falls like a curtain between them, blocking any tears from his sight. He doesn’t need to see them to know how they pool in her eyes, spilling past and running down her cheeks.

“Do you remember,” he starts, the words pouring inanely from his mouth before his brain can even filter them out, “when Jace dared you to jump off the swing, right at the highest point?” The words fall heavy in those sparingly few inches between them, that gaping chasm that he never quite seems capable of crossing. “And you did it, of course, because you’ve never been able to say no to a dare. Do you remember that, Iz?”

Alec doesn’t finish the story. He’s waiting for something. What that is, he isn’t quite sure. For Izzy to finish the story? For them to sit there and reminisce on when they could at least pretend that their lives were innocent and easy? For the right words to somehow assemble within the jumble of his heart and work their way out past the tightness of his throat? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know, and there’s no easy solution for this. No monster for him to fight, no shadows for him to scare away, nothing but tears he isn’t allowed to dry anymore and a drug addiction that he can’t beat for her.

There’s a near silent little sniffle beside him. Alec kindly ignores it, even as it breaks his heart, even as his body screams at him to reach for Izzy. “How did you find me?” Izzy mumbles, voice tight from tears and petulance.

He holds out the battered carnival prize but doesn’t say anything in explanation. His sister reaches out and grabs the alligator, curling her arms around it and holding it close to her chest. She isn’t wearing her typical sort of outfit; no long expanses of skin showing, no obscenely high heels. She’s dressed in a simple pair of black leggings, the sensible sneakers that she prefers for training and patrols, and a gray hoodie that Alec is 95% certain used to be his before his nosey little sister got her grubby hands on it.

They sit in silence. It’s pervasive and overwhelming, almost suffocating; Alec feels like he’s drowning. But the thing is: Alec handles silence far better than any of his siblings. He might be uncomfortable, might have the itch in his hands to scrape his fingernails over still-healing skin, but the quiet is a pressure point that Alec can withstand far longer than Izzy. Eventually, she will be the first to break. Alec’s stomach churns with guilt; it feels too much like manipulation. But he knows that he has few options if he wants to get his sister to talk with him.

“I know what you’re doing,” Izzy mutters out.

Alec hums, but doesn’t deign her with an answer. She would be foolish _not_ to have caught onto Alec’s favored method of dealing with his siblings. All three of his younger siblings are completely incapable of being strong-armed into doing anything they don’t want to, and Alec had learned that in the hard way growing up. Now, he knows that the only way to get them to do anything is to wait them out, let them come to the conclusion on their own – with maybe a bit of influence from himself.

Alec is patient. Izzy is not.

He might be patient, but there’s an itch in his hands, a tremor in his legs. He wants to pick at the partially healed over scabs on his palm, little bumpy crescent moons that never get the chance to fully disappear before he’s scraping them open once again. But he knows better than to try and risk it in front of Izzy; she’s always hated seeing that side of him. So instead he wraps his hands around the old chains of the swing, tightening his grip until the cold metal bites into his skin, and he pushes off of the ground. It’s been far too many years since he played on a swing set and his legs are far too long for the motion, so he doesn’t end up going very high. The movement is soothing enough. He likes the weightlessness of it, that momentary rebellion against gravity that lifts his concerns off of his shoulders, however fleeting, and then that sudden drop in his stomach as his soul resettles back inside the confines of his body.

Alec continues on like this, leaning back in the swing and watching as Izzy grows continuously more aggravated. The hinges of his swing keep squeaking, a grating noise that rattles in Alec’s head and makes him wince, but he can see how his sister reacts even worse to it than he does. A pressure point, one which he can use to convince her to finally break her petulant silence. He keeps going, swinging higher and higher, and he’s distantly aware that it would be far more enjoyable if Izzy hadn’t fled the Institute in some sort of panic, if Jace wasn’t out getting trashed, if Magnus wasn’t running away from him. It would be so much nicer if Alec could _actually_ just lean back in the swing and let the weightlessness of it all ease his burdens.

It takes nearly fifteen minutes, but eventually Izzy cracks. “Will you just knock it off already?” she snaps out, waspish and pissy in a way that only her brothers can make her.

It’s progress, and Alec is too frustrated and exhausted and concerned to care much if Izzy wants to bitch to him. It might be the only way to finally draw any amount of the truth out of her, whether willing or not. So, like any good big brother, Alec channels his inner Jace.

“Knock what off?” he asks, voice deceptively nonchalant and careless. “I’m just letting loose, having fun. You know, like you always tell me to do.”

He doesn’t have to look at her to know exactly the sort of scowl that overtakes her face. Izzy has mostly had the same stink-eye since she was a toddler, and Alec has been on the receiving end enough times that he’s immune to it. She seethes out a long-suffering groan that almost borders on a shriek and Alec has to conceal a grim smirk. He’s always been the best at outlasting his siblings.

“I just had to get out of the fucking Institute, alright!” Izzy all but shouts, voice piercing in the empty park around them. “I just couldn’t fucking stand being cooped up in there for another night!”

The desperate confession is aggrieved enough that it makes Alec’s heart burn in his chest and bile rise up his throat. He doesn’t want to pressure Izzy into talking to him, but he doesn’t know what else to do; all he knows is that it _isn’t okay_ for her to just suddenly run off and nearly send him to an early grave with a heart attack.

“Why?” he simply wonders, instead of voicing any of the aching sympathies he holds in his heart. He, of all people, understands needing to escape the confining walls of the Institute. But he needs to know why _Izzy_ feels like this.

“_Ugh,_” his little sister heaves out, and he couldn’t agree more. “It’s just – _mierda_ – everyone is always watching, always just _waiting_ for me to screw up. The others don’t know about the _yin fen_, but they know _something_ is up. And I just always feel their _eyes_ on me, expecting me to fuck up some mission or ruin some report or make some mistake,” she finally spits out, rapid-fire and slipping into the accent that their _abuela_ used to speak with. And then Izzy draws in a fortifying, miserable breath. “I thought- I thought that something like that wouldn’t bother me, not after the past few years. I just figured that I would be immune to their judgments, after all this time.”

The sentiment makes Alec’s stomach curdle, even as he’s letting his feet drag through the gravel and gradually slowing to a stop. He turns to face Izzy, but she’s not looking at him. Instead, her head is tilted down, her fingers idly playing with Kay-Kay, her gaze somewhere faraway where not even Alec can reach her.

“Yeah,” he agrees, whisper-quiet. He looks down at his hands where they rest limply in his lap. His palm is still tender and pink and he hates himself for not applying an _iratze_ like he was supposed to. He thinks of the two hundred shadowhunters who want to abandon the New York Institute, of the Clave that refuses to grant him any requests for more people, of the downworlder cabinet that threatens to crumble even before it can begin. “Yeah. I get it.”

Izzy looks up then and meets his gaze; he sees a sadness buried deep in her eyes, glimmering in unshed tears and years of judgment. Jace may be his _parabatai_, but Alec and Izzy have never needed a rune to understand each other.

“I almost didn’t come to the park,” she admits, nearly silent. The tears building in her eyes grow even more, but she doesn’t look away from him. She holds his gaze and he feels some of her defiance gathering back in the strength of her bones. “I almost went to Queens. I almost went to a bleeder den.” The words are heavy, Alec can see how they weigh down on her. Her shoulders are strong, but how much of the weight does she feel she must carry on her own?

“But you didn’t,” he reminds her. It’s something that his own therapist has stressed to him, something that he’s often had to remind himself: ideation does not equate to action. The thoughts can be there, invasive and demanding, and you can still have the fortitude to say _no_ to them. There’s power in that, in denying the hold that something tries to have on you.

She looks down, back to that toy alligator resting in her lap, and Alec doesn’t know if it’s shame or frustration or fear that drives the action. He wonders if maybe it isn’t all three. “I thought that I could get through this alone.”

It pains his heart to hear it, but Alec has to hold back a sigh of relief. _This_ is the breakthrough he’s been trying to make with Izzy for _weeks_, ever since he first found her at the DuMort. He doesn’t like to think it, but sometimes – perhaps – pain can be necessary to heal. Izzy couldn’t just be _told_ that she wasn’t strong enough to survive withdrawal alone; she had to realize that for herself, had to come to that conclusion without anyone holding her hand.

And he wants to articulate that, wants to remind her that he’s always _right there_ for her, that Jace is always on her side. He wants to tell her that Santiago was willing to leap to her help, that Clary immediately did everything she could to find her. That there are people who care for Izzy, that love her, and that are willing to do whatever she needs them to. But he doesn’t know how to gather those words, doesn’t know how to assemble the jumbled up thoughts in his head so they make some semblance of comprehension.

“Do you remember when you jumped off the swing?” he asks instead, praying fervently that maybe – just _maybe _– Izzy will understand what he’s trying to say.

His sister smiles, soft and warm like a dawning sun, and Alec thinks that she _does_ get it. Her smile turns wry and bashful at the reminder of their rambunctious youth and it makes her look like the little girl with pigtails and scabbed knees that he remembers so fondly.

“I broke my ankle,” she recalls wistfully. “And none of us had our steles, because we were idiots. You carried me all the way back home.”

He needs her to understand, even if Alec cannot find the words to explain. He will always be there to carry her back home. That’s what he’s _there for_. To fight the fights of his siblings, to cry the tears they cry, to shield them as best he can from a world that is too cruel. That’s who Alec is, that’s what he is. And he needs Izzy to remember that, needs her to know that the _yin fen_ and her addiction has done nothing to change that.

“I’d do it again,” he affirms, meeting her eyes with a severity that he hopes she can feel. “In a heartbeat.”

She nods, and Alec can breathe again for it. But the somber mood around them is broken by the sly smirk that tugs at his sister’s mouth, a mischievous glint shimmering in her eyes. “You’d do it again?” she repeats.

Alec doesn’t even try to suppress his groan. “Really? You came to this playground in the middle of the night and now you want me to carry you back?” he grumbles, even as they both know it’s an empty gesture. He caved before she even dared to ask.

Of course, then his annoying little sister is holding her arms out expectantly, a smug and victorious smirk gracing her lips. And Alec remembers that for every ounce of love he has for his siblings, he has just as much hatred for them. Particularly when they use _his_ goals against him.

But, as always, he dutifully stands up and half-way crouches in front of Izzy and exaggerates his rolling eyes when his sister leaps onto his back with far too much glee. It’s only a small mercy that Izzy is so much lighter than him, because he can feel the exhaustion of the night catching up on him even as he hooks his arms under her legs and straightens up. He can’t help but think of all the other times they did this, back when they had still been allowed to be goofy children. He doesn’t remember the last time it happened. Too long ago, he thinks.

Izzy loops her arms around his neck loosely and leans her head against his shoulder; on his opposite shoulder, he can see the tattered head of the alligator resting there. He feels like an idiot, but out of all the embarrassing things he’s done for his siblings, this doesn’t even make top twenty. Maybe not even top fifty.

“_Te amo, hermano,_” she sings in her most sickly-sweet tone of voice, a joking platitude that is nevertheless true.

That falsely high-pitched voice of hers has always grated on Alec’s last nerves; the worst part is that Izzy knows it. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he huffs out in the most aggrieved manner that he can. “_Capullo_,” he grumbles under his breath.

It earns him a swift, chastising pinch from Izzy’s dangerously long nails and a pointed, shark-like grin aimed at him from where her head is resting on his shoulder.

“_Yo también te amo, hermanita,_” he corrects, leaning his head against hers just hard enough for their temples to smack lightly.

Izzy grumbles, removing one of her arms from his neck in order to rub at her smarting head, but he can see the peaceful little grin that overtakes her expression from his peripheries. He can also see her eyelids drooping. If she falls asleep while he’s carting them all the way across Manhattan, he’s going to drop her in a particularly foul-smelling puddle.

(He knows that’s a lie even as he’s thinking it, but a brother can dream.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love me some Lightwood sibling bonding time :) Alec and Izzy definitely needed it. Also, I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm really loving the unlikely friendship between Alec and Clary. The more of them I write, the more I want to keep writing them.
> 
> Note on the world-building: there are FIVE BOROUGHS of New York and also FIVE FACTIONS of the Shadow World!!! Coincidence? I think NOT! The Institute is located in Lower Manhattan (with a smaller outpost in Hell's Kitchen...), Magnus' loft is in Brooklyn Heights, the Jade Wolf is in Hunts Point, the Hotel DuMort is in Sunnyside, and the entrance to the Seelie realm is in Freshkills Park. I'm not making any of these names up and they all fit TOO perfectly.
> 
> I don't know any Spanish, so all translations come straight from Google. If anything is incorrect please let me know.  
Te amo, hermano - I love you, brother  
Capullo - common curse word in Spain, loosely meaning asshole or the like  
Yo también te amo, hermanita - I love you too, little sister
> 
> Thank you all for your continued support! Please leave me kudos and comments!
> 
> Love you all,  
~PNGuin


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update. Rest assured, I am still (slowly but steadily) working on this. Hope everyone is having a good holiday season and is prepared for more wonderful angst!

Alec has just barely enough time to tuck a half-asleep and clingy Izzy into his own not-completely-wrecked bed before he’s rushing about, changing into a shirt that doesn’t smell like three-day-old sweat and hastily combing through his unruly hair with fingers and frantically brushing his teeth. He makes it to his office by the skin of his teeth, a whole two minutes before his scheduled debriefing with the supervisors of the Institute’s divisions. Why they felt the need to have it at six in the morning, Alec will never know.

Predictably, the meeting is a shitshow. Just like pretty much every other facet of his life. The mundane relations office is struggling to handle the police shooting from the previous night, communications is having tech trouble that is bringing productivity down nearly 30%, the weapons division has gone several thousand dollars over budget (yet _again_), administration has caught a slew of misfiled reports that no one is taking the credit for, the monitoring systems have begun mistaking vital demon information, and his patrol units keep picking inappropriate fights with innocent downworlders.

What he wants to do is scream, call out every slightest bit of incompetence and give his entire staff the most humiliating dressing-down of their careers, send every last lazy-assed homophobic and racist scumbag on a one-way trip to Wrangel Island. What he needs to do is watch his temper, keep his Institute fully-staffed, and find a way to ensure that everyone does their fucking jobs.

He has the Inquisitor breathing down his neck and over half of the Clave meticulously watching his actions under a microscope, waiting to spot even the slightest crack in his efficiency, in his usefulness. Even most of the shadowhunters working under him have their eyes keenly trained on his decisions and his abilities, eagerly anticipating the infamous downfall of Alec Lightwood. Jace and Izzy and their entire ragtag band of strays may not grasp the precarious nature of his grip on command, but Alec understands what the Clave has always enforced. The Clave’s mercy and lenience only extends as far as a shadowhunter’s usefulness.

So Alec can’t afford to slip up. It reminds him of Hodge’s curt instructions and half-hidden disappointment during training sessions, of his mother and father giving him canings or dressing-downs whenever he failed at some expectation, of Hightower bending him over the desk and spanking him if he refused to behave. Alec knows how to bury all of his own urges and wants, knows how to outwardly comply even if he’s inwardly fuming. He knows how to keep his rebellions silent.

He triages what damage he can: makes a phone call to Luke and coordinates an effort to get the NYPD off of the Institute’s glamored back, orders some of his best techies to work on the malfunctioning systems while everyone else temporarily reverts back to old-school paper filing, gives a firm warning to the supervisor of the weapons division and forces them to rework the budget, has an investigative team hunt down the shadowhunters misfiling reports and put them on ichor duty, gets several of his most knowledgeable people updating the monitoring systems, and begins planning a mandatory racial sensitivity training class.

By the time he’s finally finished running around the Institute and applying band-aids to gaping wounds, it’s already dark outside, his vision is going spotty, and he can’t remember the last time he ate or slept. Yesterday, maybe? He feels hollowed out and empty, all the way down to his bones. It’s like there’s a brisk chill cutting right through him, leaving him frozen and desolate inside.

He collapses into his desk chair like a puppet whose strings have been cut, and he idly wonders who his puppet-master must be. He thinks he knows the answer, even if it leaves a rancid taste in his mouth. By some miraculous shred of strength left in him, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his phone.

No new messages. It shouldn’t be that surprising; Alec has never been the type to have his phone blowing up, except on nights when Jace and Izzy would go out and drunkenly text him. But ever since he and Magnus began dating, Magnus has sent him a pleasant _good morning_ text, almost always followed by a ridiculous string of heart-themed emojis. It’s such a juvenile habit, and yet it has never done anything less than inspire an embarrassingly large smile and vibrant blush. And they try to text throughout the day whenever they can, although both of them have a tendency to lose track of time and become too absorbed in their respective work.

But his phone is blank. No messages from Magnus. No cheesy _good morning_ and subsequent string of sappy emojis. No random comments about obnoxious clients or frustrating potions or terrible translations. Absolutely nothing for perhaps the first time since they started dating. And Alec doesn’t know what that means. Suddenly, he’s blinded by panic. Did Magnus even make it home from Pandemonium last night? Did he even notice that Alec didn’t stay all night? And if he did, is he angry at Alec? Upset, pissed off, concerned? Is he avoiding Alec? How many times can Magnus forgive him? How many times can Alec keep crawling back until Magnus finally turns him away?

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t have the faintest idea. And he doesn’t know what to do. Does he find the strength to get up and walk to Magnus’ loft? Would Magnus even want him to come over? Alec wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t; not after everything that he’s done. Maybe Magnus is finally sick of waking up to the sight of the man who strapped him into the execution chair. Maybe he’s finally tired of trying to deal with Alec.

Without thinking, he’s somehow tapped on Magnus’ contact and his finger is hovering over the keyboard. He wants to type out a simple _‘can I come over?’_ but something stops him. If Magnus hasn’t already asked him to spend the night, then surely it wouldn’t be a welcome proposition. After everything he has done, Alec doesn’t have the right to just presume any sort of claim to Magnus’ home, doesn’t have the privilege to insinuate his position in Magnus’ life.

He locks his phone and sets it back onto his desk. He feels cold, even with the heat of the New York summer settling heavily in his office like a haze. A shiver of dread crawls up his spine and it’s only his exhaustion and fatigue that stop the tears from falling. He draws in a ragged breath and lets it out in a huff that leaves him slumped bonelessly in his chair. Alec doesn’t think he can even move.

But he has another slew of meetings and reports and disasters scheduled for tomorrow, and he can’t afford to mess up. So he somehow manages to drag himself to his feet, using his desk to help support his weight, and he meticulously rearranges his reports into some semblance of order before he finally stumbles out of his office. He practically has to lean against the walls of the hallway just to reach his room.

The bed is still messy and unmade from when Izzy had slept there early in the morning; he isn’t surprised, Izzy has never consistently made the bed. Usually, he would be frustrated by her lack of order. But his skin is buzzing and his ears are ringing and his eyes are watery and he feels like he can’t breathe. If he breathes, his lungs will expand right out of his body and all the air will rush out of him; he will be like a deflated balloon, his soul will float away and become part of the wind.

He doesn’t even bother to shrug out of his jacket or his pants before he flops face-first onto the bed, bouncing gracelessly on the old worn-out mattress. The room is warm, almost stiflingly so, and yet a deep-rooted chill creeps into the very marrow of his bones. He’s had the same bedroom since he was moved out of the nursery, and the walls are stained with too many memories.

He thinks of Hightower sitting at the edge of the bed, of his desk with the faint fingernail scratches in it, of the old textbooks that still hold tear stains. Alec frantically kicks his boots off and burrows underneath threadbare sheets that somehow still smell of stale fear. He curls as tightly into a ball as his frame can allow, his knees digging into the hollow of his chest, guarding his heart and preventing it from bursting out of his ribcage. When he wraps his arms around himself, he imagines that they’re _Magnus’_ arms, that there are ring-adorned fingers skimming soothingly over his stomach, that there are smooth tanned legs entwined with his own, that there are warm calves to bury his cold toes against.

There aren’t. But he pretends, and it’s almost enough.

Not enough for him to actually fall asleep, not enough to soothe the frantic rabbiting of his heart or the ache that nestles deep in his chest. It’s just barely enough for him to calm down to the point where he can feel each and every pain in his body. His skin tingles all over, his hands shake, he can feel the anxiety all the way up to his eyeballs. There’s nothing he can do. No amount of paperwork or patrols or meetings could provide him with an answer.

Distantly, he wonders if Jace is in the Institute tonight, only to immediately reject the notion. His brother hasn’t spent a full night in the Institute for some weeks now and, if he were still in the building, then Jace would have already stumbled into Alec’s room half-asleep, crankily told him to quit thinking so much, and collapsed onto Alec’s bed so that they could both finally get some sleep.

Jace isn’t there, and Alec doesn’t have the heart to ask for him. So he lays curled up in the same bed that he has slept in since he was ten. It’s a full size mattress, meaning that if he stretches out his feet hang off of the edge; not for the first time, he laments yet another way he no longer fits in at the Institute. He gazes up at the stained glass window that depicts righteous angels, the same cold-eyed passive beings who watched over him every time Hightower came into his room. He wonders where mercy comes from, if not from angels. He doesn’t have an answer.

At some point, he must drift off into an uneasy slumber, although the seconds of fatigued half-wakefulness and fitful moments of maybe-sleep blur together in some indiscernible pattern. But he must be asleep one minute, as in the very next he is awoken by the blaring of the Institute’s alarm.

Even with his brain addled by fatigue and pain, Alec is leaping to his feet and grabbing his stele with a singlemindedness that has been ingrained since he was a child. He didn’t bother to change out of his clothes before he went to bed, so all he needs is to quickly shove his feet into his boots and he’s out the door before his brain has even woken up. Every move he makes is spurred on merely by his soldier’s body, reacting as expected even when all he wants to do is crawl back to Magnus’ loft and burrow under expensive sheets and a warm body.

Instead, he marches straight for the Ops Center and barks out orders the second his foot is past the threshold. Chaudhury, the director for the current night shift, hastily informs him that a patrol disturbed a nesting _shax _horde. A horde that is now sprawling across Manhattan and inflicting unknowable damage upon innocent civilians.

Alec rifles through all the worst-case scenarios rapid-fire and he comes to a plan of attack even before he reaches the end of the Ops Center. A skeleton crew to remain in the Institute, the rest of the active duty shadowhunters split up into squads. He arranges for all of the patrols to form a rough circle around the area of disaster with the intent for everyone to work in towards the center, where a small-scale portal to Hell still hangs open.

Between all of the chaos from the last few months and the slew of transferring shadowhunters, the Institute is understaffed and the few people remaining are practically running on fumes at this point – at least, Alec certainly is, and he isn’t sure if any of his people are faring better. With Freeman, Nightwine, and Noblerun down for the count and Grunwald, Dawnwell, and Cartwright still in Idris, they’re severely lacking in squad leaders; and considering that Izzy is incapacitated and banned from patrol until further notice and Jace is bar crawling somewhere in the seedier parts of downtown Manhattan, Alec fears that the _shax_ demons may be more than the current New York Institute can handle.

By all the standards of the Clave, Alec is resolutely expected to remain in the Institute and lead from the back. Aldertree followed such norms, as did his own parents. But Alec can’t look at the exhausted shadowhunters hurrying around the Ops Center and even fathom the notion of abandoning them to all the grueling field work. He can’t, for the life of him, sacrifice the wellbeing of his people just to ascribe to some expectation from a council of pencil-pushers who have probably never even _seen_ a demon outside of a simulation.

So, Alec puts himself in charge of a squad, tasked with being on the frontlines in order to push through the horde and get the sealing team safely to the standing portal. He doesn’t want to be the sort of leader who dispassionately sends his people off to die; he wants to be the leader that bears the thick of the conflict right alongside them. He stubbornly convinces himself that it is a necessary evil to push past his own fatigue, even as his vision threatens to narrow in on him. A quick stamina rune eases the stress headache that pounds behind his eyes; for now, it’s enough.

With a practiced urgency, Alec runs through his own pre-patrol routine. Gather gear, check weapons, stock up on arrows and spare blades, review parameters one last time. In the sparingly few minutes that he has out of the ever-present watch of his people, he allows himself just a brief respite of leaning against the wall. He can’t breathe and there are a million and one maddening thoughts scattered in his head, digging into the walls and tearing him apart. Even with the flurry of activity just beyond a closed door, Alec wastes five minutes staring down at Magnus’ contact on his phone.

It’s only a level two rift, Alec reminds himself. A high amount of demons but, overall, a low threat. For all intents and purposes, all of the active-duty shadowhunters at the Institute have been trained and evaluated to handle rifts up to level four. A warlock’s assistance is only officially requested for any situations presenting a higher threat than that.

They don’t need a warlock. They _don’t_. And Alec suspects that his first instinct of needlessly asking Magnus for help is nothing less than (yet another) point of contention in his leadership. There are so many eyes on him; he can feel their weight bearing down on his shoulders, pushing him deep beneath the earth until it buries him alive. Try as he might, Alec isn’t strong enough to dig himself back out, not even as he hears the phantom echo of Magnus. _When things get crazy, don’t push me away._

Magnus always helps him, whether it’s by closing rifts and destroying demons or wrapping Alec up in his arms and beating the nightmares back. Alec wants to call, wants to reach out, wants to hold on to whatever it is that exists between them. But can he? If he is no longer the one pushing away, but _Magnus_ is? Does Alec have any right to ask for more from him, after all that the older man has suffered _because of Alec_?

Alec doesn’t have time to feel sorry for himself, to sit here and mope in some pity party; he doesn’t have the luxury of mourning whatever he may have lost in the infinite spaces between him and the man he loves. There’s a horde of demons tearing up Manhattan and Alec only has so much time before the circumstances become dire; an estimated two hundred _shax_ demons – low threat level or not – against an Institute with only six hundred and eighty three exhausted and overworked shadowhunters are not great odds.

They might outnumber the demons, but that doesn’t factor in all of the many separate facets of the task at hand. Nearly fifty soldiers currently pulled from the roster – for injury or probation – one hundred and fifty to remain at the Institute in case of emergencies, another two hundred necessary to try and herd innocent bystanders out of the demons’ ways without letting them be any the wiser. Alec himself is heading the final two hundred, the shock troops, tasked with rounding up the _shax_ demons and slaughtering them before too much damage can occur.

If his people all manage to push aside their exhaustion and do their jobs with the expected amount of competence, the whole disaster should last no longer than two or three hours, plus any leftover clean-up. But that may be asking more than anyone is willing – or capable – of giving. It just may very well be too presumptuous of an _if_ to assume that Alec’s people will give their all for a leader they neither trust nor respect. The thought stings deep in his heart, but he swallows down the feeling and takes a deep breath.

He pockets his phone and shoulders his bow before shrugging off the heavy dread that settles in his stomach. Chin up, shoulders back, laden with weapons, Alec heads out to stand before his people, facing his enemy head-on right at the frontlines.

They have demons to deal with. And at least these are the kind that Alec can kill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone say it with me: in a city of over 8 million people, you need way more than just 20 shadowhunters. There are approximately 35,000 police officers in NYC, so I think giving Alec 600-some shadowhunters to work with is still undershooting it. Is this more of PNGuin rebuilding the world so that the shadowhunters can be the competent and badass militant force that they SHOULD have been? Why yes, yes it is.
> 
> On Alec staying in his childhood room: I headcanon that the Lightwoods have a residential wing of the Institute to themselves, so Alec and his siblings have simply stayed there since they were kids. Poor boyo should probably move to the Head's suite but trauma is a bitch and he is opposed to the notion. We'll go into that later.
> 
> Will I ever give any of us a reprieve from the angst? Maybe one day. Stay tuned for more. (And if you want something happier, check out the one-shots related to this series. There are at least a couple happy ones.)
> 
> Love you all and hope you all have a wonderful new decade,  
~PNGuin


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the long wait (again...) but thank you all so very much for sticking with this story anyway.
> 
> Warning for a bit of violence, a little more flushed out and in-depth than what is depicted in the show.

He’s right in the thick of battle, his blood sings with a thousand years of war and his fingers sting from notching yet another arrow. It’s a sharp, relieving sort of sting, the kind that he actively seeks out whenever he flees to the Institute’s rooftop and spends hours firing his bow. The sensation keeps him awake, keeps him alive, keeps him _focused_ on the horde of _shax_ demons cluttering up the streets of Manhattan.

Alec is perched on a rusted-over fire escape that groans every time he shifts his position. In the meager hour since he coordinated their plan of attack and dispatched over half of his people, Alec has already gone through a full quiver of arrows. He’s on his back-up quiver now, but sooner or later he’ll be forced to leap down from his vantage point and join the fray with a seraph blade drawn. As it currently stands, he’s managing to keep most of the horde off of the squad of shadowhunters crouched around the rift to Hell, the handful of individuals tasked with sealing it off.

Clary is down there, working alongside Bluestone, Scarsbury, and Morningcross. All of them are highly knowledgeable surrounding rune theory and they know exactly what sequence of runes are necessary to close the sustained portal. Scarsbury is one of the best sealers in North America, and Bluestone came to the New York Institute fresh from an advanced rune program in Oslo. Morningcross has two unofficial strikes in Alec’s book, largely regarding insubordination and subtle slurs against himself, and yet – given the severity of the situation – he has little choice but to trust that the nephilim imperative to _get the job done_ weighs heavier than the cruel tendency to disobey some degenerate abomination.

He doesn’t care what Morningcross thinks of him. Harshly whispered words and poorly disguised glares behind his back are hardly top priority when he has a million other concerns on his mind. At the very moment, the still-open rift straight to Hell is at the top of the list. Clary’s safety and ability to work with the sealing crew – her first time operating outside of his or Jace or Izzy’s direct supervision – is somehow resting right up there. Jace’s whereabouts and Izzy’s status and Magnus’ wellbeing all fall somewhere below, in the face of his current situation.

Movement at the corner of his eye has him shifting sixty degrees to his left and firing off another arrow. It impales two demons, immediately banishing them in a spray of ichor that burns a scorch mark into the brick wall behind them. Another handful of _shax_ quickly replace the last, and Alec continues on, drawing back the bowstring and releasing with a steady _thwp_ which sounds in time with his heartbeats. Each subtle movement is exact, meticulous in the way that had been drilled into him from a young age. Alec isn’t like Jace or Izzy; he has never cared for the superfluous exaggeration of their showmanship, their overwhelming tendencies to flaunt their skill. Efficiency is key.

And it’s his renowned efficiency which has earned him a reputation. He isn’t one of the best fighters by nature – not like his siblings so often prove – but what he lacks in raw talent, he more than makes up for with an attention to detail that is all but unparalleled in the shadowhunter ranks. There are stunningly few trained archers among the nephilim, and far less are comparable to Alec. Not many shadowhunters demonstrate the dedication necessary to master the bow in actual combat situations, for any number of reasons. The fighting style of their people focuses on close-combat – a difficult method for any archer – and far too many struggle with the unwieldiness of switching between bow and blade within the span of a second. A bow is all too often a liability in the tightly-packed and condensed streets of a major city, and yet Alec has managed to turn it into an advantage.

If there’s one thing that Alec does feel an ounce of confidence in, it's archery. He remembers picking up a bow for the first time – only five, one of his earliest training sessions with Hodge – and how his tutor and parents had tried to dissuade him, had tried to push him towards blades. He would never achieve the accuracy needed to make a bow efficient on the streets of New York, is what they had always told him. And he remembers firing arrows until his fingers bled, until the bowstring was slick with his blood, until each arrow landed dead center.

Not many shadowhunters can nail three _shax_ demons right through a major artery while they are mid-fight. Alec can.

And he does. For what must be nearly thirty minutes, he maintains his position on the fire escape and disposes of the enemy forces before they can get within blade distance of his people. The sealing team is only half-way through the intricate process, and Alec is running low on arrows. He pauses a mere split second to reach back for another arrow, but it’s just enough time for the horde to take advantage.

One moment, Alec is standing resolutely on the rusted over metal stairs. The next moment, something is slamming into his back with the force of a semi-truck. His right hand loosens in shock – a foolish mistake – and his bow tumbles from his grasp. He can hear it skitter along the grating of the fire escape. But he has no time to recover before he’s over-balanced; his hip rams against the railing, and the rusted metal gives a final almighty groan. And then he’s _falling_.

Five stories up is hardly a fun distance to fall from. Especially when he lands on the edge of a dumpster. It’s only by the grace of his activated runes and the ingrained instinct to roll when he makes impact that prevents him from breaking his back. His deflect rune – permanently activated on his neck – takes the brunt of the damage and manages to distribute it evenly across his body; it makes every one of his muscles _ache_, but it’s far preferable to a snapped spine.

It also helps that a _shax_ demon had been clinging to his shoulder and had gotten caught between the dumpster and Alec, shattering into a spray of noxious ichor on impact. He can feel the ichor where it splatters against his neck, dripping down beneath the collar of his jacket. He’ll have a chemical burn from the substance until he can clean it off and apply an _iratze_, but it’s a negligible injury in comparison to the circumstances.

Now that he’s no longer poised to shoot demons before they advance too close to the rest of his people, a final wave of _shax_ come skittering down the walls. Their claws scrap over the brick, the sound like a screech that rattles Alec down to the bone. There’s too many, and they don’t have enough people in the immediate vicinity, and the sealing team is still in the middle of the process, and his back _aches_, and he doesn’t know where his bow is.

All these thoughts rush over him in the span of a second, and then Alec is moving. He rolls to his feet and unsheathes his seraph blade just in time to catch a _shax_ demon right in the stomach. Between one heartbeat and the next, Alec is surrounded by a violent clashing of shadowhunter and demon. There is only the singing of an angelic blade and the sting of ichor as it sprays onto exposed skin.

He slips into the flow of battle with all the ease his parents and tutors had beaten into him, but Alec doesn’t have the luxury of single-mindedness. There’s only a small deployment of shadowhunters in this particular New York alleyway; the rest of his people are dispersed throughout Manhattan, rounding up the scattering infestation of _shax_ demons. But now that the rift is being dealt with, it’s emitting energy like a honing beacon, calling all of the demons back to the origin of their intrusion.

Alec rolls away from what would have been a nasty slash to his shoulder. He’s just about to bring his free hand up to his Institute-issued earpiece and relay orders for nearby squads to regroup by him, when a deep tremor rattles through the ground. At the same time, three demons simultaneously lunge for Alec. He manages to cut clean through the first one, but the second lurches against his legs and the third rams into his chest. The momentum is too much for him to withstand, and for the second time within ten minutes he finds himself falling back and collapsing onto ichor and blood-stained concrete.

Someone – Cloudgrove, he thinks – yells his name, but none of his people are close enough to him to be of any use. Distantly, he thinks that they need more long-distance fighters at the Institute; he’ll have to design a training regimen and see if he can garner enough support and funding for it. He doesn’t have time to dwell, not when there’s two _shax_ demons looming over his prone body and he’s struggling to shift the position of his blade enough to slash at them. His arms are trapped between his own body and the imposing weight of a _shax_ demon and, right at his periphery, he can see a wickedly curved claw headed in his direction.

There’s a pinprick of sensation above his right hip and a familiar shout before a seraph blade cuts cleanly through both _shax_ demons in one fell swoop. A spray of fresh ichor splashes down onto his face and chest, and Alec dreads the five or so showers it will take to scrub the smell off; his skin crawls with just the thought of it. His brain is drowning in so much adrenaline that he has to just breathe for several heartbeats, and only then does Jace’s obnoxious face bleed into his awareness.

“Hey, buddy,” the blond greets, offering a grin that is equal parts smug and hesitant in a way that only Jace can manage. If Alec weren’t so exhausted, he would be infuriated by it. But that doesn’t stop him from accepting the hand that his _parabatai_ offers. “Looks like I showed up just in time.”

He says this as if he’s some hero, abruptly making an appearance at the very final wave of demons, as if Alec and all of the other shadowhunters around him haven’t been busting their own asses for the past few hours trying to contain the situation, as if he isn’t subtly swaying in an attempt to keep his balance even as he tugs Alec back onto his feet.

Now that Alec has regained his feet and is standing right beside his brother, he can smell the particular stench of alcohol on Jace’s breath. Alec’s become far too accustomed to that scent, whether it’s wafting from Jace after too many nights out at the bar, or it’s clinging to Magnus like a parasitic vine. He’s altogether sick of alcohol.

A part of Alec wants to hug Jace, pull him closer in a futile attempt to steady the sway in his balance, to soothe over whatever unknown hurts are pushing Jace to spend so many nights out of the Institute. Another part of Alec kind of wants to punch the smug grin off of his dumb face. The largest, and loudest, part of Alec reminds him that he has a job to do.

Within moments, the _parabatai_ easily slide into the flow of battle. Alec calls for the scattered shadowhunter forces to regroup at their position, and it takes mere minutes for their forces to respond accordingly. It’s with a sense of overwhelming pride – and not a little grateful surprise – that Alec surveys the sight of the people under his command efficiently disposing of the enemy. So long as his shadowhunters continue to follow his orders, continue to handle situations as their jobs dictate, then he doesn’t even care what they want to whisper about him behind his back.

Scarsbury eventually signals that they’re in the final stage of sealing, and the sight of a steadily closing portal to Hell causes a stirring of relief that is almost palpable among the still battling shadowhunters. Alec himself can’t help the wave of satisfaction that passes through him, but he doesn’t pause to relish in it. Just as the rift is collapsing in on itself, folding up and bending reality back into its proper place, he feels a sharp sting lance all the way up his spine and across his skull.

He doesn’t have to be near Jace, doesn’t have to see him, to know what it means. His knees go wobbly for a split-second before steadying, his vision blurs and then sharpens, each of his muscles tense. His rune burns, low on his hip, and the sensation claws all the way up his spine. The phantom ache of pain that is not his own echoes at the back of his head, tingling over his body like a static charge. The relatively detached imitation of injury that lances across his body allows Alec to catalogue the potential damage, even as he’s spinning on the spot and launching himself in Jace’s direction.

The world sharpens into a pinpoint of perception, widening steadily until Alec can hear every slash of a seraph blade through the air, every hiss of a _shax_ demon, every crackle of power from the slowly closing rift, that residual _ache_ that spreads over his shoulders and down his sternum like a burning chill. He’s aware of everything all at once, but nothing matters as much as the shock of blond hair and the splatter of bright red blood.

Alec reaches Jace before anyone else, slashing down the lone _shax_ demon that has caught him off guard with a sort of brutal efficiency that is both perfectly expected and horrifically uncontrolled. Before the demon is even done dissolving in a spray of ichor, Alec is clutching at Jace’s jacket and supporting his weight. The blond splutters once, head lolling even as Alec tries to ease his collapse to the cracked and stained concrete, and his legs give out beneath him. The sudden weight has Alec’s knees dropping onto the concrete with a painful impact that rattles all the way up his bones, but he at least manages to prevent Jace’s skull from cracking.

Clary skids to a halt beside him and Alec can only hope that her presence means the sealing team has finished up. She’s frantic beside him, nervous hands fluttering over Jace’s body as if that will do any good, and Alec has to ruthlessly push her aside so that he can tear his brother’s shirt open.

The wound is worse than expected. The skin is split open, a jagged slash dragging from the medial range of his right collarbone outwards, tearing down past his ribcage and ending at his external oblique. As soon as Alec removes the tattered remnants of Jace’s shirt and jacket from the injury, a spurt of blood erupts, a bright enough red that it would be almost cartoonish if not for the icy panic that claws relentlessly at Alec’s chest.

He slams a hand down over where the heaviest of the bleeding stems from, along the upper edge of Jace’s right clavicle. The bone is misshapen, snapped in an odd angle; there’s a hint of white poking out from the mass of red beneath Alec’s hand. Arterial blood, his brain disjointedly supplies when the next quick spurt of blood threatens to spray past his compressed fingers. Subclavian artery has been hit.

Between one ragged breath and the next, Alec is yelling for Redthorn and Jaywing – the top-ranked field medics that _should_ be somewhere nearby – all while he digs out his stele and begins applying runes. _Iratze_ to seal up the skin. _Sanguis_ to replenish blood. Clary is somewhere off to his side, and Alec thinks he can hear her retching. A cruel, nasty part of himself wants to sneer; if she cannot even stomach the reality of their world, what is she still doing here? He pushes the thought away.

A team of medics are at his side in what feels like hours, but what he logically understands to be only seconds. With wounds such as this, those seconds _matter_. Shadowhunters have a high pain tolerance and unmatched constitution; they can survive things that would obliterate other humans or downworlders, but even one of the nephilim can bleed out in mere minutes.

He’s promptly shuffled further away from Jace’s chest, kneeling detachedly by his brother’s legs. Close enough to continue drawing _iratzes_, far enough to not get in the way of the medics. It feels too far. But that’s his _parabatai_ on the ground, bleeding out in spurts of blood that come too slow for a healthy heartbeat, and there is no shadowhunter on the face of the planet that would even _dare _try to separate them entirely. Not when Alec’s drawn _iratzes_ will work more effectively than any other shadowhunter’s there, not when Alec’s entire chest is an eviscerated mess of distantly echoed pain and furiously pounding heartache. Alec can’t separate what is _his_ and what is _Jace’s_ anymore. They bleed together, lying on the cracked concrete. He can’t breathe. Or maybe it’s Jace who can’t breathe.

Even with runes and angelic blood, missions can all too easily go horrifically wrong in the span of seconds. Jace’s predicament is nothing more than one in a long line of expected casualties. A morbid statistic, but one that Alec has been reminded of since he was first learning runes on flashcards.

But shadowhunter field medics are highly trained. They set to work immediately, a constant litany of muffled words cutting over Alec’s awareness. Some of it trickles into his ears. He thinks of when Izzy used to storm into his room and lay out on his bed, drilling the _both_ of them with terms better suited for an exhausted med school student than a precocious twelve-year-old girl.

He hears the words rumbled by the medics, but it’s in Izzy’s voice that the definitions rattle around in his head. Succinct, calculating, unemotional; she always says that’s why she works with dead bodies. It’s harder to get attached, harder to cry over them.

_Anticoagulation, _thinning of the blood; increases risk of bleeding out. Alec thinks of the stench of alcohol that clung to Jace’s breath, of the _shax_ venom that blackens the edges of the wound. Enough that the platelets in the blood are not clotting. Enough that Alec can feel each drop of blood as it leaks out, as if it is his own body lying there. _Hypovolemic shock_. Severe blood loss. Threat of low blood pressure, high heart rate, rapid breathing. All factors which will further contribute to the terror that nestles, sickly and cloying and suffocating, under his ribcage.

It doesn’t feel like Jace could die. Even as Alec’s rune burns and his body _screams_ in agony for all the pain his _parabatai_ is in. Even with the mixing of brilliant crimson and viscous black that stains Alec’s hands and the concrete and Jace’s chances at life. Even as the medics continue their work, actions calmly composed over thinly-veiled concern.

For all the pain and the fear and the horror, it only lasts a meager seven minutes of his life. And then the medics are leaning back and Alec can breathe. The gash remains, a vicious mass of brutalized red and black skin. Not fully closed off, but the artery has been clamped, _sanguis_ runes micromanaging the flow of blood where the heart can no longer pump it. Bones remain misshapen underneath the translucent skin, some threatening to poke through like bleached white needles. There’s a dreadful rattle to each of his shallow breaths. Alec can feel it in his own inability to fill his lungs.

Alec can’t concentrate; not on the blood that’s sticky between his fingers, not on the constant redrawing of _iratze_ and _sanguis_. His thoughts flit, as ephemeral as gnats. The rift has been successfully closed. The remaining straggling _shax_ demons are being cut down with particular prejudice. There’s hundreds of exhausted, bone-weary, pissed-off shadowhunters scattered over Manhattan that Alec needs to recall and compensate for their hard work. But his _parabatai_, his little brother, is lying there in a pool of his own blood that is noxious enough for Alec to _taste_ in the air.

Some unknowable strength hardens Alec’s spine. It resounds with the harsh words of his mother and father, the cruel sneer of Hightower, the mockery of Hodge. Jace is stable, at least enough for an emergency medical evacuation, at least enough to get him to the Institute. Alec can’t afford to fall apart. Not when he’s just barely managed to keep his head afloat, not when he’s only been in command for a few meager weeks, not when everything else in his life is crumbling with all the readiness of an ancient ruin.

Redthorn gives him one last confirmation, a single pat to his shoulder that feels heavy and weightless all at once. _Stable, survivable, full recovery_ is what his mind latches onto. They will transport Jace back to the infirmary at the Institute and it will be a matter of their medics and Silent Brothers finishing up the process of stitching Jace back into full health.

They’re out of the red; no longer is it a life or death situation. Everything is _fine_, but Alec can’t feel it.

He clambers to his feet, swaying unsteadily as if he were the one who had lost so much blood. But he forces himself to still, forces his legs to hold him, forces his body to bend to his own will. It’s harder than he thought possible to take the necessary few steps away from Jace; each foot fall rattles up his legs and shakes the very ground beneath him.

Jace is placed upon a field stretcher and lifted up by a team of two. And Alec has to turn away, has to face the shadowhunters who are currently picking over the remaining debris from the battle, has to ignore the pounding of his heart and the shallowness of his breathing and the terror that clings desperately tight within his chest.

His brother is transported back to the Institute with no more hassle. And Alec knows what his responsibilities are. He is no longer simply a _parabatai_ or a big brother. He’s a leader to his people, and with that position comes the furtive glances of dissatisfied soldiers and the poorly hidden sneers of his administrative superiors and the ever-present looming threat of losing everything he’s ever worked for.

Alec sucks in a deep breath and begins barking out orders to shadowhunters, even as their cold eyes flicker over the phantom wound that has split open, this glaring vulnerability laid right out for the wolves to feast upon. He’s always considered his _parabatai_ bond to unanimously be a good thing; but now all he can see is the liability it gives him in the field and in command, the strain on his shoulders, the unforgiving criticism of his own people.

But he snaps out commands and they fall into line, willing or not. Alec supposes that it will have to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More world-building goodness: you cannot have a warrior culture in the modern world that knows jackshit about emergency field medicine! All shadowhunters who are active in the field are REQUIRED to routinely pass medic-based classes (similar to EMT and first responder training). While Izzy is a mad genius when it comes to medical knowledge, Alec is no slouch and he knows enough to understand a situation like this because competency is my (second) favorite kink.
> 
> I wanted to do something with Jace and Alec because they haven't had the chance to interact in this fic so far. Unfortunately, Jace is an idiot who shows up to emergencies while still trying to overcome last night's binge drinking at the Hunter's Moon. So have very injured Jace and very upset Alec. You know, the usual.
> 
> Thank you all so very much for your continued support of this fic! I'm glad you guys are sticking it out through all this angst. Maybe one day we'll finally make it to the happy parts...But until then, please continue to leave me comments lamenting how this angst tears you apart. I live for that.
> 
> Love you all,  
~PNGuin


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